


Three Hearts Beating as One

by Diary



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Parker (Leverage), Bechdel Test Pass, Bisexual Eliot Spencer, Condoms, Domestic Fluff, Families of Choice, Former Damien Moreau/Eliot Spencer, Friendship/Love, Gay Damien Moreau, Getting Together, Late Night Conversations, Mental Health Issues, Minor Sophie Devereaux/Nathan Ford, Multi, OT3, POV Eliot Spencer, Pansexual Alec Hardison, Polyamory, Relationship Negotiation, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24980935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: AU. A look at a world where hearts can exist outside of people’s chest from Eliot Spencer’s POV. Complete.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Eliot Spencer & Team Leverage
Comments: 10
Kudos: 74





	Three Hearts Beating as One

_Never take a job without seeing the buyer’s heart_ , is a good rule, but when his nephew has a broken leg, it’s one Eliot Spencer’s willing to break. Even with insurance, the medical bills are too high, and he wants his nephew to have a college fund. For the family to be able to go to Disney World next year.

Besides, no one’s seen Nate Ford’s heart since _his_ kid got worse than a broken leg, but from what everyone saw before, Ford was an honest man. There was some heavy scarring to the heart, but it was red, plump, and had no visible holes.

He meets the team he’ll be working with in a diner. Ford’s sitting with a young black man, and his eyes are drawn to the kid’s heart lying on a napkin. Overly big, has tons of cracks but only two thin scars he can make out, and is a deep almost plum red.

Idealistic, then, most likely, and he’s tempted to walk out.

Instead, he walks over, and sitting down, he files away the best way to dismember the heart with the wrapped silverware.

“Ford.”

“Spencer. This is Alec Hardison.”

“Hey, man.” Hardison stretches his arm out. “I’m Internet and Computer Fraud, or to keep it simple: the computer guy.”

He shakes the hand. It wouldn’t be polite not to.

Politeness doesn’t have anything to do with business, however. “Aiming to get out of your mama’s basement?”

“Age of the geek, baby,” is the easy response.

Hardison’s heart didn’t darken or lighten, constrict, or pulse.

There’s a shift, and suddenly, this blonde woman is sitting between him and Ford.

“Hello, Parker,” Ford calmly greets.

He keeps his hand on the rolled up silverware but doesn’t start peeling back the wrapping.

“Damn, that was impressive,” Hardison enthuses. “Hey, I’m Hardison. Did you just come from the ceiling?”

She doesn’t shake the offered hand, but Hardison’s heart is too busy beating an almost purring rhythm of impressment to crack or constrict.

Her heart must be inside her chest like his and Ford’s are.

“Nathan Ford. Boys I don’t know.”

“This is Eliot Spencer,” Ford says. “Now that we’re all here, let’s discuss how we’re going to steal some stolen plans.”

The stolen part matters to Ford is easy to tell without seeing his heart, and he’s strongly tempted to leave. This has all the makings of a disaster: Buyer whose heart hasn’t been seen, a judgemental, honest man who holds himself better than all of them, a naïve man who will either be overconfident or overwhelmed, and crazy girl who drops in from ceilings.

He never got to go to Disney World as a kid. If he’d broken his leg back then, it might not have healed right; between the hardware shop and him, he’s pretty sure what his dad would have gotten fixed. Thankfully, his nephew has two better parents than he ever did.

…

It goes well. Hardison is overconfident, would probably get overwhelmed if anything had went wrong, Parker is 20 pounds of crazy in a five-pound bag, and Nate is a smug, judgemental, self-loathing bastard, but nothing went too wrong. They got in, got the plans, got out, and now, he’s transferred a fair amount of money.

For all his calls haven’t been taken since he left home, his nephew has two good parents who aren’t going to refuse the money, not when it means their boy will get better physical therapy and a trip to Disney World.

He’s considering calling up Vance, but then, a woman carrying a latte bumps into him.

A beauty, is his first thought. A little older, stylish, might be a trap.

“Oh, sorry,” she says in a perfect mid-western accent.

Trap or army brat. She’s never been in the service herself, but there is a possibility she’s from a military family.

“No problem, darlin’,” he answers.

And yep, it’s almost certainly a trap. He read the brief look in her eyes. It was gone quick, but-

“Let me help you try to keep it from staining.” Grabbing his hand, she drags him to a nearby burger joint. “I’ve taken some acting classes, and one of the first things I learned about wardrobe was…”

Her heart is attached to her wallet, and it’s a full, healthy red with a few cracks, a thin scar wrapping around it, and no visible holes.

“I’m Sophia.” She smiles, and there’s a question, an expectation he tell her his name, in it.

“Pretty name. Look,” he grabs the wrist of the hand dabbing something against his shirt, “I’m not sure if it’s real or not. I don’t care if it is. Either I’m the creepy man here, overreacting to a nice lady’s kindness, or you’re a pro. And I don’t necessarily mean when it comes to sex.”

He lets go of the wrist.

After a beat of both of their hearts, she wryly says in a British accent, “Well- I’ve never been directly paid for that. I like to consider myself an enlightened, sex-positive person, however.” She continues doing something to his shirt. “It’s Sophie, actually. That’s not the name I was born with, mind you, but it’s the one Nathan Ford best knows me by.”

Gesturing to a table, she says, “Let’s sit down.”

He knows he should leave, but it’s not as if he really has anything better to do.

They sit, and his shirt is still damp, but he can see the staining is almost gone.

“Sophie Devereaux. I have a complicated history with Nate.”

Her heart hasn’t been put away, and he sees-

“Not much complicated about being in love,” he states.

And it’s good his own heart is hidden, he knows. For all he’d like to believe this, for all he does believe this might be true for others, his own heart has three large holes from Damien Moreau.

From himself.

Being in love doesn’t excuse bad choices, is something he holds firm to. He crossed too many lines all on his own.

“I don’t know if you know better or not, but yes, it can be. And I’m not- I don’t fall in love. He has before, but when his son died-” She trails off.

This part isn’t for dramatics, he sees. She’s not a sociopath; a little kid dying, especially the way Sam Ford did, hurts her. Her loving Nate is only a part of it.

“Now, he can’t love you back.”

Her heart gives an irritable thump. “Again, I’m not in love. I don’t fall in love. I do- worry about him. He and I used to chase one another. When Sam got sick, he stopped, and I let him. I decided to get out of the business myself. I’m an honest citizen now. But I’ve heard he isn’t.”

“I can’t say. I helped him do one job.”

“You could help me find out,” she says. “There’s a job, and if he’s not out, it’s one he’ll take. If he refuses it, then, he’s fully out.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Nate went to seminary school.” She slides her phone over, and he wishes she hadn’t. “One of his former best friends is a priest. Father Paul. I believe he’s a good man.”

The one responsible for these pictures- he wishes he could find and kill them himself. For all the thought sickens him, what they’ve done is far, far worse.

“How’d you get involved in this?”

Suddenly, his hand is literally on her heart, and he can’t move.

“Listen to me very carefully, Eliot Spencer. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life. I’m not near as ashamed of them as, perhaps, I should be. Hurting children has never been one of those things. I teach acting classes, and one of my students, her daughter was one of the victims.”

Carefully taking his hand away, he nods.

His own heart won’t be settling for a long time, but he can’t particularly blame her. Once upon a time, he’d have exposed his own heart if it meant dispelling any notions or accusations he’d ever intentionally hurt a kid.

“Is the daughter okay? Okay as she can be?”

“I hope she will be eventually. Her family’s doing all they can. If anyone can stop these priests and nuns, it’s Nate.”

“What if he is completely out?”

She shrugs. “I can’t stop them all.”

“But?”

Her smile is neutrally pleasant.

She can do things to the ones who hurt her student’s girl, at least.

“You know how to contact Ford? ‘Cause, I don’t.”

The pictures are gone. “Yes.”

…

Ford’s living in a crappy apartment, and when the door’s answered, Ford’s drunk.

“Eliot? Spencer?” Ford blinks blearily at him.

“Sophie sent me. Sophie Devereaux.”

Ford moves aside, and coming in, he takes in the liquor bottles, the half-eaten pizza, and the clothes thrown around.

“Why you?”

“I don’t know. I was half afraid of what her answer would be if I asked and half convinced she wouldn’t give me a straight answer anyways.” He starts picking things up. Some people get touchy about this sort of thing, but he figures Ford is too wasted to do anything but tell him to stop.

“Last I heard, she was in Japan.”

“I didn’t know her from Adam until yesterday. This Catholic boarding school is abusing their students, and one of her acting students’ kids was a victim.”

“Coffee,” Ford mutters.

“I’ll get it.”

Once it’s made, they sit on Ford’s couch.

“Is this something you’re part of?”

Biting down the ‘yes’, he shakes his head. “No. There’s no money involved. I just hope to never run into Devereaux again.”

“Yeah, well, you might,” Ford says. “What if there was money involved?”

“No rich parent is paying for this. The nuns and priests, they’ve been doing horrible things, but stealing, embezzling, isn’t part of their crimes.”

“True, but what if,” is the insistent question, “money was involved?”

“I’d ask how.”

Taking a long sip of his coffee, Ford slouches down. “The Church takes care of its own, for good and bad. There’ll be a fund set up to help deal with something like this. Cover it up. We steal from the fund, every penny, and we expose the atrocities to the world. It probably won’t change much, but at least, there will be a few less bad apples in the mix.”

He considers this.

“We’d need more than us. A team,” Ford continues.

“Who are you thinking?”

“Well,” Ford hauls himself up, “Hardison left me his number, and I think he put a tracker on Parker.”

“Of course, he did,” he finds himself saying.

It’s not really a surprise. The tracker thing- isn’t creepy, though, in other circumstances, it would be. He’ll need to go through all his stuff later to try to see if there’s one on him, too, but he doubts it.

Alec Hardison clearly worried about Parker (understandable), and if any of them were going to call, it’d be Nate Ford.

“He didn’t need to with you,” Ford says. “He thinks, if you wanted to see him, you’d find him. Parker would never go looking for him, and I’d never call without a reason.”

“I’m happy never seeing him for as long as I live.”

Chuckling, Ford sits down with a phone. “Well, if you take this job, you’ll need to be unhappy for a little while longer. In or out?”

“In,” he answers. “What the hell. I don’t have anything better to do right now. But I expect to get paid.”

“Of course you do.”

…

“Welcome. I have snacks,” Hardison announces.

The place is nice.

Based on the orange soda bottles and cheap pre-packaged cake wrappings around Hardison’s computers, the snacks won’t be.

“Your air vents suck,” Parker says.

He hates it, but his mind goes through the best options to kill her. Ford and Hardison would be easy, but she might present a challenge.

A psychologist once told him his intrusive thoughts didn’t say anything bad about him (she would have been too easy to kill). She was a nice lady, smart, and maybe she was good at helping other people, but he never went back after the first session.

“I’ll, uh, see if I can’t do something about that,” Hardison says, and his heart is practically purring again.

He wishes he could see Parker’s, see if there’s any chance Hardison has one, see if she realises how stupidly sweet Hardison is on her or not.

Opening a beer, Nate says, “A little warning about Sophie-” He produces a DVD. “Got somewhere I can play this, Hardison?”

They watch it, and he feels bad for her students on a whole different level.

Nate, however, if his expression is anything to go by, is in love.

But then, he learned a long time ago to never trust faces; only hearts never lie, and even those can be dolled up to look different. Take away any coloured plaster and strings, though, wipe any paint, and the truth will show on a heart more than it will a face stripped of makeup, glasses, coloured contacts, piercings, and anything else.

He almost feels bad for Nate. He wonders if Nate was faithful or if he strayed before his boy got sick, and for Nate’s sake, he hopes for the former. If it’s the latter, he wouldn’t judge Nate for being human, but he knows, against all logic and common sense, some part of Nate would blame himself for what happened to his little boy on an even deeper level.

There’s a knock on the door, the DVD’s put away, and Sophie comes in.

He watches how she makes her tea, and he watches how she casually sets her heart down within touching distance of Nate.

…

They come up with a plan, and Sophie asks, “Eliot, will you walk me to my car?”

He was Nate’s ride, but waving them away, Nate calls a cab.

Outside, they wait until Nate’s cab has driven away.

“Can we talk for a minute?” She asks.

In her car, she smiles. “It took some time for me to get used to the driver’s seat being on this side. I am British, you know. That’s real.”

“All due respect, I didn’t ask, and I don’t care.”

“No,” she says with a hint of something in her voice. “I suppose you don’t. Not about that. I tried. I really, truly did. Perhaps, I should have- I should have just wired the money into his account. Into his wife’s. I could have. Instead, I stole the most important painting I could find, and I was going to let him discover it, get the reward money.”

“What happened?”

“Three days,” is the toneless reply. “I was three days too late. I knew time was short, but he wasn’t supposed to suddenly get even sicker so fast. Sam. He was watching a movie with his parents, and then, he was in intensive care. An hour later, he was gone. Three days later, the painting was ready to be found.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because, you don’t trust me. I doubt you ever will. And that’s fine. Nate trusts me when it comes to something important. Poor girl, I doubt Parker will ever trust anyone. And Hardison, he’s a little too trusting for his own good. What I want is for you to know the person you don’t trust.”

“Yeah, I get it. You’re a lot of things, but you don’t hurt kids, and for all you say you ain’t in love, you might well kill anyone who truly goes after Nathan Ford. Think I’m a threat to him?”

She shrugs. “I think, someday, someone is going to get past your defences again. I think they’re going to hold your heart in the palm of their hands. And I think, I have a very strong feeling, actually, that this person will be worth it. Whether you believe it or not, I’m sorry whoever hurt you so badly did. You didn’t deserve it.”

You have no idea what I deserve, almost comes out.

“Drive safely, Miss Devereaux.” Getting out, he shuts the door.

…

Parker grabs his glasses off his face.

“Why do you wear these?” Putting them on, her face grimaces in a way he probably shouldn’t find near as comical as he does.

“Give those back.” He takes them only to have them swiped by Hardison.

“Farsighted,” Hardison announces. “Mildly.”

Snatching them off of Hardison’s face, he moves away from the two.

“What’s that mean,” Parker asks.

“You see that action figure over there?”

Sophie squeezes his shoulder before he can add in his own thoughts.

“Uh-huh.” Parker bops her head.

“Eliot can probably read the words on Gustav’s t-shirt from where he’s sitting, but if he takes off his glasses, he’ll have trouble seeing Sophie’s face clearly.”

Parker looks between him and Hardison with clear disbelief. “But I can’t read the words. Do I need glasses?”

“We could test your vision,” Hardison offers. “You probably don’t. Most people with good vision couldn’t read it, either. It’s just that Eliot’s eyes are designed to be able to see things farther away better than up close. With most people, they can see things up close fine but might have trouble seeing far away.”

“How would you test my vision,” she asks with a mixture of suspicion and something more tentative.

And so, Parker’s vision is tested, and Hardison announces it perfect with too much reverence for him to not roll his eyes at.

“Why don’t you wear your glasses all the time?” Parker asks.

“Sometimes, I wear contacts.”

“Huh.”

Thankfully, Nate finally decides to show up, and if he looks out the window to see Nate’s car-

“He took a cab,” Sophie quietly says.

Relaxing, he lets the meeting start.

…

“I could do this again,” Hardison declares.

The payment wasn’t big. People are always going to invoke God to do horrible things, and getting these few people thrown in prison for life isn’t going to do anything to significantly decrease the number of kids who suffer due to this fact being in play. This team might end up getting him killed, and this is if he doesn’t end up killing them.

But the truth is, when he looks inside himself, he doesn’t have anything better to do. He doesn’t particularly like the person Vance is becoming for all he still likes working with Vance, and for all Toby’s promised he’ll always have a job, he can’t see himself settling down permanently to cook in a restaurant. He needs more excitement, more to do in the world.

“One more,” he finds himself saying, and his heart does something in his chest.

…

When he looks at his heart after he gets to his apartment he finds some of the cracks have disappeared, and it might be a little redder.

Still full of holes, though, and the scars are still prominent.

…

One more job turns into five.

At some point, a portrait painted by Hardison of Nate as an older, dignified gentleman is displayed (“I’m gifted,” was Hardison’s response to him pointing out the weirdness), and he gets intimately acquainted with Hardison’s kitchen.

“What about you, Eliot? You ever come close to getting married?”

Earlier, Sophie had told them about the time she swindled an impressive mahr from a Dubai prince, and for someone who considers himself a Robin Hood rather than a person who helps people in order to justify his thrill of heists, Nate sure doesn’t have any real problems with the fact she’s clearly used many, many men in order to line her pockets.

“No.”

“What was her name?”

Pausing in rearranging Hardison’s spice rack (which Hardison didn’t even have, let alone any proper spices, and in retrospect, him showing up with said rack along with a few spices might- he might need to walk away soon), he can’t contain his chuckle.

His heart is still safely out-of-sight in his chest, but Hardison does have a knack for reading people. It’ll probably never be fully weaponised (thank God), and Hardison’s lack of understanding the fact there are some people who are truly even worse than all the people they’ve gone up against so far might be the kid’s undoing, but Parker has gotten to where she likes to sit near Hardison’s heart.

He doesn’t believe she’s going to hurt it one of these days, and he hopes he isn’t becoming soft and stupid.

“There was a girl I grew up with, but anyway, she married someone else. So.”

Pretty Aimee with her heart pinned to her chest who grew into gorgeous, smart as hell, captain of the debate team Aimee. She understood his desire for more than the store, and she was willing to wait for him to be ready to settle down.

It was and wasn’t his fault she got no letters, no phone calls, anything for a year and a half. When he came back, she was engaged, and her heart had developed another hole. One for her Mama, one for the man she loved who might have died, and he’d watched a scar appear as she yelled at him, unsatisfied with his explanation of going deep undercover.

He could have told her he’d been captured. He could have even proven it.

But her husband seemed like a good man, and he wasn’t going to risk even more holes and scars on her heart. Not because of him.

“Look, man, I’ve never had a serious relationship. I’ve never lost someone I’ve been in love with. But I have lost people I loved. It may not suck the same way, but it does suck. I’m sorry.”

Hardison’s words and eyes and beating heart are all gentle, and looking at him, he realises, Crap, he’s not a kid.

Too idealistic, too overconfident, everything else he pegged Hardison as was right, but Hardison is a fully grown man, not some annoying twenty-something kid.

It was easier hoping Hardison never did lose someone he was in love with before he realised this.

What kind of boy makes it to a man without some girl (or boy) breaking his heart?

“It’s part of life. You’ll learn someday.”

“I hope I don’t,” is the simple response.

It’s not something I can protect you from, he thinks. Even if you were still a kid, I couldn’t, no matter how much I want- might want to.

…

He gets hurt on the job.

A thug gets lucky, and his head is hit.

“I don’t have a concussion,” he insists.

“Well, since you won’t go to a hospital to get that confirmed, you’re staying,” Sophie declares.

She’s taken his keys, and if that were all, he’d already be away from these crazy people.

Hanging upside down from Hardison’s ceiling, Parker is watching him like a hawk. He’s not sure she wouldn’t whack him on the head if he tried to do something she didn’t like despite a head injury being the whole reason the others are trying to kidnap him.

“Look, Eliot, I got an extra bed, and I’ve ordered your favourite pizza. Here’s the remote.”

“That’s- I’m not staying here!”

“I’ll drive you and Hardison to your place, then,” Nate says. “Parker, do you want to come?”

“Nate,” Sophie protests. “You have an extra bed, too.”

“One look at my refrigerator, and he’d start redoing my kitchen the way he has Hardison’s,” Nate responds.

“Sitting right here,” he grits out.

“Yeah, do you need to lie down,” Hardison asks, and suddenly, Parker is manoeuvring him into stretching out on the couch.

The pizza comes, and everyone eats.

He insists on staying on the couch, and after Sophie practically tucks him in, she and Nate leave.

Parker and Hardison wake him up through the night, and the realisation these people might care about him, truly care, hits him when he’s brushing his teeth in Hardison’s bathroom.

He makes plans to walk away, but then, Aimee’s daddy calls needing help.

…

“You going to track down the ex-husband,” Hardison asks.

“Nah, man. That isn’t what she’d want.”

Taking a swig of his beer, Hardison nods. “Good.”

“Why? Were you going to try to stop me?”

“No. I was just going to ask if you’d make some chocolate pancakes for Parker before you left.”

Slowly, he’s been getting her to replace sugary cereal with a bowl of oatmeal with a reasonable amount of chocolate chips sprinkled in, and now, he’s working on getting her to drink orange juice on occasion. Eventually, he’ll get her eating toast with honey or jam, but getting her to eat slices of fruit might be a lost cause.

Hardison’s drinking of litres and litres of orange soda is a problem it’ll take even longer to solve, but other than this, Hardison actually has a pretty decent diet most of the time.

“Speaking of. You and her.”

“I’m going to make her my friend,” Hardison declares.

The words surprise him.

“It’s no secret I’d be lucky to get with such a beautiful, amazing woman, but I doubt that’s ever going to happen. And so, I’m going to be one of the best friends she’s ever had.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Thanks, man. Hey, that Sterling dude is something else, huh?”

Groaning at the memory of Nate’s old insurance colleague, he answers, “That’s a family-friendly way of describing him for sure.”

…

The reviews for Sophie’s most recent play (that, in truth, are a little too tactful for how godawful it was) have caused several large cracks, and so, they’re planning how to steal some senator’s vintage Mercedes to help a women’s clinic stay in business.

“What about you, mama? When’s the first time you let someone touch your heart?”

Glancing over from the tea he’s making, he sees Parker looks unperturbed by Hardison’s question.

“A long time ago,” is the dismissive reply. “It’s better where it’s at now.”

Hardison and the others are ready to accept this, but something in him twitches.

Abandoning the tea, he comes over. “Hey, Parker. What- your heart is in your chest, right?”

“No, why would I keep it there?”

“Eliot, would you finish my tea, please?” Sitting down, Sophie takes one of Parker’s hands. “Parker, would you tell me where exactly it is?”

The room’s tension grows as Parker raises an eyebrow. “No.”

“Okay, fair enough,” Sophie patiently says with a wave for the rest of them to be quiet. “But it is somewhere near here? Hearts are never supposed to be more than ten feet away from a person’s body.”

“Phbt,” Parker scoffs. “That’s a stupid thing people believe. Mine’s been safely in a safety deposit box for years.”

Bringing the tea over, he squeezes Hardison’s shoulder, partly to keep himself grounded.

Just last month, Parker travelled halfway across the country. It’s highly unlikely-

“Parker, you can’t-” Nate starts.

Quieting him with a look, Sophie takes a deep breath. “Parker, do you remember how you said you owed me a favour?”

Looking unhappy, Parker nods. “Yes.”

“I’m calling that in right now.”

…

Wearing gloves, Parker presents her heart, and he hopes he didn’t recoil.

He’s seen ugly hearts before. He’s seen damaged ones.

This- some part of him is hoping this is a cat’s heart or something, a trick or con Parker is playing.

It’s unnaturally flat, sickly gray, and he can’t quite make out where the scars stop and the holes begin. Even though it’d be wrong, he’s tempted to put on a pair of gloves, grab it, and shove it into Hardison’s hands. Hardison could, at least, get it filled out a little and maybe coax a little bit of red into it.

“Favour’s done,” Parker firmly declares.

“No,” Nate says even firmer, “it’s not.”

“Parker, can me and you talk privately,” Hardison asks with almost unbearable gentleness.

…

It takes three days and Nate saying the team is taking a hiatus from any jobs for Parker to agree to their terms, and he can tell part of her hates them for this.

He can’t really blame her, but-

“This has kept me strong,” she says.

“You don’t know that this won’t make you stronger,” Hardison offers.

“I know it might make me weaker.”

From the reading and conversation he had with a nice cardiologist, there are extremely rare cases where a person can safely travel long distances away from their heart without someone else’s in their possession, but no one’s really sure why. One generally agreed on theory is sociopathy might explain it.

It’s a wrong theory, but for all he knows, it’s been correct for everyone but her who’s done it.

Sitting on the floor, Parker sets her heart on her lap, and taking off her gloves, she strokes it with a finger.

Almost immediately, she’s crying, and before he can react, she’s thrown it across the room.

Grabbing gloves, Hardison goes to get it. “I know.” Sitting next to her, he says, “Hey, Parker, I know. Not to this extent, but when I was eight, this bully hid my heart for a week, and when someone finally made the bastard hand it over, it hurt me every time I touched it. I just wanted to set it on my pillow. But, I promise you, once you get through the pain, you’ll feel stronger.”

“And what if I’m not stronger? Just that I feel that way?”

“Then, you’ll have us. Girl, you’re the best damn thief any of us have ever met. If this slows you down some, you still will be, and there’ll be other things you can do until you get your full mojo back. Alright? I promise.”

“Why is this so important to all of you,” she demands.

“Because, we all care about you, too, Parker,” Sophie answers. “And I promise, I’m not lying or trying to con you when I say that I honestly believe you keeping your heart locked up in a safety deposit box will end up with you suddenly dropping dead with no warning one day. And that would break my heart. Hardison’s heart. Nate and Eliot would blame themselves.”

He starts to protest, but Nate squeezes his arm in warning.

“It wouldn’t literally break your heart.”

Sighing, Nate kneels down, and he can feel himself recoil when Nate withdraws Nate’s heart from his chest. The surgeon did a decent job of stitching it back together, but half is black, and the other half is covered in tiny holes.

“Look at it, Parker, and then, look at Hardison’s. This is what losing Sam did to mine. I don’t think it would be this bad for him if something happened to you, but I know it’d be bad.”

Parker pokes the heart, and aside from a flinch, Nate doesn’t react.

“Alright,” Parker quietly says.

Nate puts it back in his chest, and they all sit down.

There’s a lot of crying, unholy noises, and the heart being thrown several more times, but finally, the tears are all gone, and the heart, though still small, is a normal size.

Still no red, though, or any thinning of the scars or closing of the holes. No hole can ever be completely closed, but some people can reduce them to tiny little dots.

That’ll never happen with her, he knows.

He feels himself breathing out a sigh with the others when Parker slips her heart into her chest.

…

“I’m not taking it out! You saw it last week.” Parker glares at Nate.

“Parker, the new rules-” Hardison starts.

“That only I have to follow. And you bribed me with Eliot’s cookies into agreeing.”

“Alright, tell you what, Parker, if you show me your heart before every con for the next month, we can start easing up on it,” Nate says. “Okay?”

“Eliot doesn’t have to show his heart.”

Oh, crap, goes through him.

Mostly at the realisation he’s eyeing the window and considering jumping.

“Dammit, Parker, I’m not the one who stored mine in a safety deposit box.”

“Well, how do we know that?”

“Parker,” Sophie gently says. “The thing is-”

He’s not ashamed of his heart, and if these people have a problem, then, he doesn’t need them. He can be on a plane to New Zealand in 34 hours, and Vance will be happy to have him onboard.

“Here.”

His hands are slightly shaking, and he hopes the stupid heart will distract them from noticing this.

Parker starts to reach out, but Hardison stops her.

“It might be worse than Nate’s,” she says.

“No, it ain’t. I’ve never lost a kid.”

His heart stays steady.

He’s lost plenty of kids, eighteen and nineteen-year-olds who signed up, because, there were no other real options. He’s killed kids younger than that. His nephew wouldn’t recognise him on the street.

But as far as he knows, he doesn’t have any biological kids running around and never has.

Frowning, Parker says, “Put it back. It’s upsetting the others. Worse than mine does.”

Doing so, he can’t help but tell her, “They’re not upset by yours, Parker. Just worried about you.”

…

After the mission, he and Hardison are cleaning up after everyone leaves when Hardison grabs his arm. “I just thought you should know: We worry about you, too.”

“Well, that’s stupid of you and the others.”

Shrugging, Hardison lets go. “Look, I know you aren’t going to stick around. The thing is, I think, someday, you’re going to find someone, and you’ll definitely be the sticking around type. But we aren’t that person, none of us. I don’t really pray much. I believe in God, but I’ve just never been one for prayer. When you leave, though, I’ll think of you sometimes. Wish you well.”

“And you don’t think you’re someone worth sticking around for?” Comes out before he can stop it.

“Oh, I know I am. Someday, someone amazing is going to find me amazing. They’re going to want everything I have to offer. I just know, no matter how much I like all of y’all, none of you are gonna stay. My Nana, I’d die for her, no question. I love her more than anything or anyone, but she doesn’t, can’t, really understand me. You and the others, y’all get me more than most other people do. That just isn’t going to be enough.”

Hardison’s heart is sad, but stupid Hardison has to truly be so damn mature about this, so sincere and open in his words.

He misses the punk kid he was worried was going to get killed or get them killed.

At least, he didn’t think about kissing that one.

…

“Hardison, get back to the damn van!”

Ducking, he kicks the goon attacking him down. Unfortunately, for all this one doesn’t have much upper-body strength (stupidly too reliant on multiple guns), this goon is good at dodging blows.

“Yeah, just a minute. Alright, look, Eliot, he has epilepsy. Take your earbud out and brace yourself.”

Cursing, he does so, and then- the goon shakes so badly his heart falls out.

For a moment, he’s tempted to stomp on it, but instead, he rushes over to drag Hardison away. “I told you-”

“I mighta just saved your life.”

“I had it handled! Your job is to get to the damn van when I tell you to.”

Nate pulls him in, and Parker pulls Hardison in.

“Seatbelt, boys and Parker,” Sophie orders.

“We don’t have seatbelts back here in this piece of crap-”

“Hey!” Hardison outright smacks him. “Lucille is-”

“We’re going to have a conversation about you not listening once we get over the border.”

“Fine by me. As long as we can also have a conversation about your lack of gratitude for me saving your life.”

“You didn’t save my life. I had it under control. Would have gone faster if I wasn’t devoting time to make sure he didn’t get near you.”

Nate, he sees, is drinking yet another beer.

The drinking will blossom into a real problem soon, but what in the hell is he supposed to do? He can’t bring Sam Ford back. He probably can’t even bring Maggie Collins back into Nate’s life, and if he could- he’s got Sophie to think about.

For all she loves Nate, obviously, she doesn’t have much options for helping him, either.

…

He falls asleep against Hardison during the drive home.

Home.

Hardison’s place that they use as headquarters.

Lately, he’s been thinking a lot about people besides him killing the team. Thinking about how he’d stop this. Thinking about what he’d do if he failed.

He can handle these thoughts a lot better than remembering what his latest one-night stand had said, _Sorry, but I just get the feeling you were thinking of someone else. Thanks for the fun._

There are times he wishes he did have someone to talk to, but then, how would that go? _A pretty woman was on her knees, she made me feel good, and then, she left without letting me return the favour, and the kicker is that she was right. I was imagining me on my knees with someone else._

When they arrive, Parker tries to crawl into an air vent, obviously to sleep, but Nate grabs her, and Sophie says, “No, no, darling. Let’s go to my place, yes?”

After they’re gone, Hardison says, “I still have that extra bed-”

“I’m taking the couch.”

“Okay.”

He lays down, but he can smell Hardison near him.

“Alright, look, Sophie’s gonna be mad if she shows up to find my bloody corpse in the morning. Nate might be, too. So, I’m going to take off your shoes, and you’re not going to kill me. Cool?”

Keeping his eyes closed, he feels his shoes and socks being taken off, and then, Hardison is just- hovering.

“What?”

“I’m pretty sure your belt will leave marks,” is the quiet reply.

Taking it off, he throws it, and what the hell, he decides. Slipping out of his pants, he throws them, too.

Part of him wishes he could see Hardison, but he can’t hear or smell anything different.

Besides, it’s not as if all of them haven’t seen him naked, and even if they hadn’t, more importantly, they’ve seen his heart.

Hardison walks away, and he hopes-

“Here’s a blanket. If you want it.”

Opening his eyes, he glares, but Hardison looks concerned.

“Then, again, maybe- don’t take this wrong, Eliot, but are you hot? You look- like you’re burning up.”

Hardison’s hand is too cool against his forehead.

“Damn it, Hardison, I’m- Here.” Taking his heart out, he sets it on the coffee table, and he can’t help the sagging his body does at the blessed relief.

Some people simply function better with their heart enclosed in something, but he’s never been one. For all it’s safer, his body or heart or both prefers his heart outside in the open air. It stays too long in his chest, and he gets too warm.

Two hours later, Hardison is finally satisfied it’s safe to go to sleep.

(He could kill Hardison so easily, he might even be able to fool the others into believing it was someone else, but Hardison is worried about potential fevers and that the killer on his couch is comfortable enough to sleep painlessly on said couch, and he can never say this to the others, but _this_ is why he doesn’t like Hardison driving the van by himself.)

…

He sleeps until three, and going to the bathroom, he plans to sneak out, but when he leaves, Hardison is blearily standing nearby. “Hey, I’ve been having trouble sleeping, too. Want me to make some popcorn?”

“I don’t have trouble sleeping. I just don’t need much sleep. But yeah, some popcorn sounds good, man.” Realising this is Hardison, he adds, “But we’re not watching any Japanese period dramas.”

“I didn’t pick that one.”

“No, but you sure didn’t do anything to dissuade Sophie and Nate.”

“You got to teach Parker how to use that sword. That you creepily produced from somewhere.”

“Hey, I ain’t the creepy one. Okay, I don’t jump from windows without a parachute or routinely hack alphabet agencies.”

Speaking of the last one, he knows, if he ever does another job with Vance, it’ll be just his luck Vance will be complaining about ‘that son-of-a-bitch hacker who should be thrown in Gitmo’.

He never cared before, but now that he knows who exactly said son-of-a-bitch is- he’d burn Cuba to the ground before he’d let Hardison end up there, if only because he has a good idea what Sophie would do if he ever let that happen.

“She jumped from a window. If you hadn’t tried to catch her-”

“I couldn’t not try to catch her. Okay, normal people-”

Hardison hands him a bottle of water. “Normal people, sure, you want to talk about them. You, retrieval specialist, I can kill a guy with a mop-”

“I mean, I probably could, but I never have. I said, there was this woman who- You know what, never mind.”

The popcorn’s done, and they sit down on the couch.

His heart stares at them.

“Do you want to watch something?”

“You know I could kill you, right,” tumbles out.

“Yeah, ‘course I do. You could kill all of us. Except, maybe, Parker. That girl would definitely be a challenge, and you just might lose.”

He finds himself laughing.

“I haven’t thought about killing people,” Hardison quietly says, “but I’ve thought about people I loved dying. Thought about how I’d handle it. Or how I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t say I’m suicidal, but yeah, I’ve had those thoughts before, too.”

Looking over, he sees the truth.

“How do you handle it?”

“I tried taking some psychology classes, but it turns out- let’s leave it at: That didn’t work.” Hardison leans back. “I haven’t thought about killing myself in a long time. I think about you and the others dying, though, and I just- try not to let it get to me. I’ll do anything I can to keep it from happening, but if it does, then, it’s gonna. Like I said, I’m non-denominational, but I believe there’s a God out there and he or she or it has some sort of plan.”

“And,” he finishes, “I’m not arrogant enough to think I could change this plan, whatever it is, no matter how much I might want to.”

“You sound like this guy I used to date.”

He was too cowardly to look at Hardison’s face when he said it, but he looks now.

There’s some surprise, but he gets his own when Hardison simply asks, “Did he really? Sound like that?”

Knowing his shrug is inadequate, he answers, “He was a good guy. Nice. Smart. I hurt his heart.”

“Sorry for him,” is the response. “And you? He damage your heart?”

“No, and that was part of the problem. I liked him, but I couldn’t see anything long-term. He deserved better than me, but I didn’t realise how much he liked me until- I almost broke his heart.”

“Happens,” is Hardison’s easy response.

He could jab, _not to you_ , or he could just point out it hasn’t to Hardison, not yet, but there’s no real point.

“You could kiss me. If you wanted. I know there’s a good chance I’m misreading things, but-”

“What about Parker?”

“What about her? I love her, but that- Me and her are probably never going to happen,” Hardison responds. “As much as I’d like for it to. I love her, and I’m going to try to always be the friend she needs. Hopefully the one she wants, too. Being her friend doesn’t mean I can’t have consensual fun with any adults of my choosing.”

“What if she does want more someday? What if she’s bothered by the fact we happened?”

“If Parker’s the type to be bothered by pansexuality, neither of us know her well, and I just refuse to believe that’s true. And if, by some miracle she does, then- would that bother you? I kind of get the feeling you have this speech all ready since that man you dated about how this can only be casual, ‘I’m walking out that door someday’. If I’m wrong, though-”

“You’re not,” he cuts in. “I like you, Hardison. You’re a friend. Really, you are. But when it comes to anything outside of the job, anything besides normal hanging out, a cup of coffee, playing video games, all I can really offer is sex. I’m no one’s boyfriend. Tried it before, several times, and it was-”

Always me, never them, he almost says, except, this isn’t completely true.

“It’s not something I’m good at, and at this point, I don’t care to learn.”

Hardison plays with Hardison’s heart. “I wouldn’t ask for more. I’ll miss you when you’re gone, but you aren’t going to break this, Eliot.”

Part of him is tempted to leave, but a larger part wants this. Even knowing it might be a bad mistake, he finds himself hoping, if he lets himself have this, it will end okay.

“Yeah, I’d like to kiss you,” comes out.

…

Pleasantly sore, he listens to Hardison sleep, and he thinks, _Shit_.

He hasn’t felt this good since Damien, and he imagined Hardison probably wasn’t a virgin (definitely wasn’t), but he was right in the fact Hardison didn’t have a wealth of experience in this area.

Damien, at least, made sense. He was already half in love when they first, and Damien had more experience than he had back then.

Slipping out of bed, he looks to make sure Hardison isn’t stirring, and seeing the peaceful, consistent rise of Hardison’s chest and the way Hardison’s eyes are flickering in REM sleep, he lets out a soft breath.

Going to the living room, he picks up his heart, and the sight of it with a reddish tinge and a few of the smaller cracks disappeared makes him feel numb.

Get dressed. Get comfortable on the couch. Start breakfast before Hardison wakes up.

Breakfast.

Setting a note on the night-stand warning he will be back and that, if Hardison can’t help himself, he’d better just have some toast, he leaves.

…

“Why’d you make Hardison such a big breakfast,” Parker asks.

“Because, Parker, if you all die of poor nutritional choices, word will get around that I might have had something to do with your deaths. That’d be bad for business. Hey, no, finish your bacon before you have more toast.”

“It’s too much.”

“Alright.” Moving the bacon strip to Hardison’s plate, he adds some honey and strawberry slices to her toast.

“I’d like to point out, as much as I appreciate the breakfast, Eliot, Hardison, my diet is generally healthy,” Sophie says.

“When these three die, you’ll probably make everyone think you had, too. More tea?”

“Did something happen between you two last night,” Nate inquires.

“Just made some popcorn and talked some before bed. It was nice,” Hardison says.

Everyone buys this, and he finds he’s not surprised. Given the easiness of Hardison’s tone, he’d believe it, too, especially since Hardison’s heart, sitting next to the jug of milk, shows no sign of deceit.

Damien’s heart rarely showed deceit, either.

Hardison isn’t like that, he insists to himself.

…

He likes to keep Hardison on edge, and usually, Hardison will pay him back by continuing when he (Eliot) is lying there an almost boneless, overstimulated mess.

Now, he’s surprised but pleased by the sudden tug of his hair. “Aw, shit. Eliot, Parker just broke into the building. She’ll be up here in five minutes. I imagine the others will be here soon, too.”

The TV screen must have come on behind him, he didn’t hear Hardison’s phone beeping or vibrating, and part of him is tempted- He doesn’t really want the others to walk in to see him on his knees, but maybe, if they knew, there wouldn’t be this thread of guilt every time he and Hardison are together. For all it’s no one’s business, this could be argued to be a pretty big secret.

Not your call to make, goes through him, and he disengages.

Thankfully, Hardison has more than one bathroom, and by the time he comes out, Hardison is talking to Parker about one of Hardison’s neighbours.

“Parker, it’s not worth anything. She painted it herself for an art class.”

“Has anyone ever tried to sell it?”

“No, but-”

“Then, how do you know it’s not worth anything? I know a fence who would pay-”

“Parker, that may be copyright infringement on top of theft. Not really sure, but the point is, you can’t steal Ms Lunenburg’s painting to sell it.”

“What if I introduced her to the fence, and me, her, and you could spilt the money? Or at least, I could get a finder’s fee.”

Hardison, the idiot, is actually considering this, but before he can say anything, Nate and Sophie arrive with cereal for Parker.

…

Once they get the plan for the newest con sorted out, Parker announces, “I’ll show my heart if Eliot shows his.”

Producing it, he manages to limit his reaction to a flinch when she pokes it.

“Parker-” Nate starts.

“It’s different.”

Everyone studies his heart, and he resists the urge to snap.

It is different, the red tinge a little stronger, and most of the small cracks have gone.

“Good,” Nate says. “I’m glad.”

“Me too.” Sophie squeezes his wrist with a smile.

“Now, show us yours, baby girl,” Hardison urges.

…

Their phones ring, and the thought, _it shouldn’t feel this nice to have his arm wrapped around me_ , is there.

“What? Nate, what are you even talking about, man? It’s- okay, it’s a reasonable hour, but we all agreed we were taking a- Parker did what now?”

Hardison sits up, and he brings himself to full alertness.

“We’ll be right there. Yeah, Eliot’s with me, had a marathon last night.”

Nate is likely going to assume video games or movies, and he can’t help but be impressed by Hardison’s ability to employ technically true but designed to mislead statements on the others.

(If Hardison does it to him, too- good for him.)

Seeing the phone’s been hung up, he asks, “What’s going on?”

“Parker took a job without us!”

“So? We’re not bound by exclusivity.”

“She’s got herself trapped.”

Trying to ignore the coldness sweeping through him, he gets out of bed. “Where is she? And where are my pants?”

…

“I’m her father,” Archie Leach declares.

He has to keep a close eye on Nate. Leach’s heart is out in the open, and whatever Leach did or didn’t do to Parker, they can handle that later; for now, if he gets the feeling Nate is about to attack the heart, Leach will go flying off the building before Nate can.

“Sophie and I are in the building,” Hardison announces. “Just a sec, and-”

“I’m here,” Sophie says.

“Okay, listen, I’m sending Eliot to-”

“I stay here,” he declares.

Shaking his head, Nate takes out his own earbud, and then, does his, too, before pulling him away from Leach. “Eliot, I promise you I won’t risk Parker. We need Leach right now. However I feel about him, I won’t risk her.”

He disagrees they need Leach, but as long as Nate doesn’t end up a murderer over this creep, as long as Parker doesn’t end up possibly hating Nate over this creep, fine.

…

“Parker, move away from the window.”

“No. No, I can’t.”

Listening to her explain why she has to finish this job, risk all of their lives, a year ago, he would have hated this girl, and maybe, some part of him does, but he can’t deny the blooming pride, either.

…

After Leach has left, he drives Parker and Hardison to Hardison’s place, and Sophie lets him despite Nate’s clear objections.

Once Parker’s gotten settled with a bowl of godawful sugary cereal, he produces her bunny.

“You took Bunny?”

“I kept her -it? Him?- I kept your bunny safe for you. For all we knew, someone would have found and invaded your creepy warehouse. Here.”

She takes it, and giving him a ‘be careful’ look, Hardison tentatively sits down beside her on the couch.

“Now, you need to tell us about Archie. Not what he stole or anything like that. How’d he treat you back when you were younger?”

“Yeah. Uh, Parker, I’m glad you had people looking out for you, but if he did or wanted-”

Making an irritated, disbelieving sound, she rolls her eyes. “You’re both talking about sex, right? Here.” She pulls her heart out of her chest. “He never did anything like that to me. Some people tried, and I stabbed them or set their houses on fire. Archie said once that he’d never been with anyone but his wife after they got married, and I believed him. But even if he had, it wouldn’t have been with me.”

Hardison wants to believe her, and so does he.

Maybe, someday, they’ll be able to.

“Alright. Remember how you and the others kept me here after I got my head hit? Well, now, it’s your turn. Your staying here for the next twenty-four hours. You can have the guest bed, the couch, or the vents, but you’re staying.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Parker, this was a big job,” Hardison gently says. “I know you did your best, but you did get caught. This isn’t punishment. It wasn’t for Eliot, either. The two of you need to learn that. For as long as Leverage Associates are in play, we look after each other. If someone gets hurt or goes through something rough, then, sure, space might be something they need, but there’s plenty of space here. I can stick to my room. Eliot might take over the kitchen, but he isn’t going to bug you to talk if you don’t want to.”

Clutching her bunny close, Parker mutters, “Fine.”

…

He cooks, and Parker and Hardison watch movies together on the couch.

They’d make a cute couple.

He’s washed Hardison’s sheets, taken out the trash, and sprayed Hardison’s room down. If something were to happen between them, the fact Hardison spent last night having sex with someone besides her wouldn’t matter. They could make the bed truly theirs, and for all he’s made it clear he’s staying the 24-hours, if they wanted privacy for that, he’d trust Hardison to keep her all too happy to stay, leave as quick as he could.

“Yo, Eliot, wrap up whatever you’re doing, and come help me explain the Matrix to Parker!”

“Dammit, Hardison, I can’t just wrap up making-”

“We should steal a time machine,” Parker declares.

The soup will be ruined, but to hell if he’s letting them come up with some idea to steal something that would have Vance on their tails.

…

Parker ends up hanging upside down from the ceiling with Bunny clutched to her chest, and if he didn’t know for a fact vampires don’t exist, he’d be trying to figure out if she actually was one.

“Aw, she’s adorable,” Hardison says. “Think the flash would wake her up if I took a picture?”

What comes out before he can stop it is, “What, you don’t have a way to take pictures without a flash?,” and now, Parker might try to kill him.

He can stop her without harming her, but he’s not so sure about Sophie.

Hardison takes pictures, and then, “Uh, about you sleeping here tonight-”

“Say the word, and I’m gone. Otherwise, I’m taking the couch.”

If pressed, he doesn’t know what objections he’d give to taking the guestroom bed. All he knows is, he wasn’t taking it the night he had a head injury, and he’s not now.

“Alright,” Hardison agrees.

…

He wakes up to Parker poking him. “Hardison’s asleep.”

“Good for him. Wish I were, too.”

She sits down on his stomach.

“Seriously, Parker?”

“I’ve had sex twice. I didn’t like it. They didn’t force me, and they were nice, but I didn’t like it.”

The silence is not good, but he has no idea what to say.

“You going to let me up?”

“Not right now.”

“Okay. Uh- I’m not sure what to say here.”

“I wouldn’t mind being Hardison’s friend, but I don’t want to have sex with him.”

“Okay, that’s fine, darling. But you already are his friend. He doesn’t want- if you don’t want sex, he’s never going to expect that out of you.”

“I don’t have relationships like normal people have, either.”

“I don’t think any of us do. Nate only got into the game after he lost his family. His real family. Hardison-” He takes a breath. “He wants a real family, and maybe, someday, he’ll get that. It won’t be any of us. If you ever change your mind, you can find someone to make a real family with, but right now, aside from him, none of us are the type for family.”

“What about your nephew?”

“He’s my blood. I try to look out for him from afar, but he has his parents and grandpa. I’d do almost anything for him, but he might not recognise me on the street. That’s not- on his end, that’s not family.”

“He makes me feel things,” she says. “I don’t want to feel them, or I didn’t, but I- it turns out, I want to be different. Not stop stealing, but I’m starting to understand why Nate is so big on helping people. It was fun, but there’s more than that. I want to do good things, even if other people, normal people, don’t like how I do it.”

“But I don’t know what to do about Hardison making me feel things, what it means,” she finishes.

She gets up, and sitting up, he pulls her close to him. “Talk to Hardison. I don’t have the answers, and being completely honest, he might not either, but I’m telling you: Talk to him. You make him feel things, too. He isn’t sure what to do, what it means, either. So, talk to him, and hopefully, you two can figure something out.”

“Show me your heart.”

He gets it out, and he can’t repress his shudder when she takes it in her hands.

The shock of it aside, her touch is nice.

“He’s your friend, too, and he has feelings you make him feel.”

Part of him wonders if she’s guessed what he and Hardison have been doing. He can’t read any sign on her face. Some part says, if she did, she’d just come out and say it, but he isn’t sure.

“Don’t hurt him. We’ll leave someday, but while we’re here, neither of us can hurt him.”

There’s a soft squeeze, and then, she’s putting it back against his chest.

“Message received. Now, look, I won’t ask many questions about these two people, but was protection used? And did you have an STD test afterwards?”

…

Parker and Hardison talk, and he’s tempted to ask if she alluded to or outright told Hardison about her shovel talk with him.

Instead, he doesn’t ask anything until they’re out for coffee and Hardison asks, “Hey, how’d you feel about coming over tonight? Staying the night?”

“What about you and Parker?”

Confusion crosses Hardison’s face. “I’m not sure- I don’t know what plans she might have. If you want us to have another movie night or something, I’ll be glad to invite her, but if this is about, uh, what usually happens when you stay over, I thought we already sorted that.”

“After the wheat job. She didn’t talk to you?”

Hardison grins, and it’s stupidly, annoyingly beautiful.

Rubbing at his chest, he wills his heart to stop being stupid and annoying.

“Yeah, she did. She isn’t the relationship type, might never be, but we’ve established some rules for our friendship. It’s great, man. She’s finally really opening up about some things, and eventually, I’ll start working to get her that way with you and the others.”

“I’ll bring my toothbrush,” he says.

…

One morning, Sophie walks into his place (he’s pretty sure he _didn’t_ give her a key), and sitting down at the counter, she asks, “What’s going on between Parker and Hardison?”

“How the hell would I know? I’m making pizza, by the way, do you want some fettucini?”

“No, thank you. I need to meet someone for a lunch date soon. You spend most of your free time at his place. Honestly, I’m surprised you two haven’t just become roommates already.”

“We’d kill one another.”

She shrugs. “They have the potential to be a stable, adorable couple, don’t you think?”

“I’m not saying never, but right now, Parker isn’t ready for anything more than friendship, and Hardison’s a good guy, genuinely okay with that.”

“Hmm. I suppose you’re right. But you’d be okay if they did become more?”

“I’d bake them a cake.”

“That’s sweet. Nate would be happy for them, too. I should go.”

“Drive safe.”

…

One day, he realises he needs time away.

Sex with Hardison. The few times he’s fallen asleep in Hardison’s bed without sex. Cons. Making sure everyone eats, at least, one healthy meal every day.

It’s all good, so good at times, in fact, but he needs time away.

“Do you want to take Bunny,” Parker asks.

“No. I can’t guarantee Bunny’s safety.”

“Be careful,” Nate says. “Call us if you need anything.”

“Yes, be careful.” Sophie kisses his cheek. “Come back without any scars or holes, alright?”

“I’ll try my best.”

Getting up, Hardison comes over, and they do their handshake. Then, Hardison hugs him, and he’s tempted to say he’s changed his mind.

Instead, he shoves him away. “Don’t do anything too stupid while I’m gone. Okay? No hacking the Pentagon again or that Japanese singer’s blog.”

“Hey, age of the geek, baby. They deserved that, and you know it.”

“Everyone take out your hearts,” he demands. “Before I leave, you’re all promising that none of you are going to get yourselves into any dangerous situations while I’m gone.”

They all produce their hearts, and Parker says, “You have to, too.”

He takes his out, and they all promise something that some part of him knows it might be a mistake asking them to and for him to make.

…

No new holes or scars to his heart, but he does come back to Hardison’s with a gunshot wound to his left thigh.

He did seriously consider simply going back to his own place, but if he didn’t go to one of them, all of them would object in painful, inescapable ways.

 _You’re in too deep_ , his brain says, and he tries his best to push it aside.

He’s been in such a position before, and so, he knows he’s not in too deep, yet.

“Take your heart out,” Hardison says.

He does.

“You been cleared to shower?”

“Yeah, the bandaging is a new kind where-” He abruptly realises an undressing Hardison is leading him to the bathroom. “Hey, look, man, I’m really not up for-”

Hardison’s look is, disturbingly, more hurt than anything. “Seriously? Really, Eliot? Believe it or not, you being hurt isn’t something that turns me on.” Hardison takes a breath. “Look, I’ve seen you more than naked. So, forget normal, and just don’t let this be weird. I’m going to help you shower, and then, we’re gonna lie down. I’m going to move the TV to my room, and I’ll order from either the Chinese or Thai place you like later for dinner, cool?”

Taking his heart out helped, but he still feels dead on his feet.

Realising Hardison is waiting, he says, “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Getting them undressed, Hardison has him sit on the toilet until the water’s the right temperature.

They shower, and then, helping him get his underwear back on, Hardison gets him into bed where Hardison carefully wraps an arm around him.

 _In too deep_ again goes through his head.

They watch TV until it flickers, and suddenly, Parker is looking down at them. “Can I lay down, too?”

“Whatever, as long as you move. I’m missing the best part.”

“Yeah, come on, Parker,” Hardison says. “I’ll rewind if I need to.”

Lying down opposite Hardison, being mindful of his thigh, she cuddles up against him.

It’s stupid, he and Hardison just have sex, and Parker isn’t interested in either of them past friendship, but he imagines them passing his heart around, taking turns wearing it inside their chests, and it’s not horror he feels when he does.

…

He wonders if he shouldn’t have left.

Nate is an alcoholic, no bones about it, but there was a time when he was a lot more functional.

Once Sophie buzzes him up to her apartment, he sets the pot roast he brought down before going to sit next to her on the couch.

“Really, I’m fine.”

“Did the drinking get worse when I was gone, or has it just finally started truly catching up with him?”

“I don’t know,” is the small reply.

“He put you in danger.”

“He made a mistake. Granted, something to be avoided in our line of work, but-”

“He was distracted by the call of the bottle, and you were lucky Hardison was so damn annoying the mark forgot about you long enough for Parker to get you out. I don’t think you’re playing me here, but I wish you were. Whoever Nate Ford used to be, he’s a drunk now. I care about him, too, but I’m not going to die by some drunken, heartbroken man’s whims.”

She scoffs. “And you think I’d let myself?”

“You’re in love, Sophie. Time to face the facts. However many people you’ve seduced, however many hearts you’ve broken, however much steel is in your veins, he did something or was something, and you fell before you could stop yourself. Only, this is worse than a wife and kid.”

Steeling himself, he finishes, “I’d die for any of you. Gun, bomb, one of Parker’s awful smoothies, I would. But this, Hardison and Parker can do whatever they think is best, but I’ll leave before I have to die protecting this group from one of its own members. Either something’s done, or I’m walking. Not a threat, just letting you know where I stand.”

“I’m not in love,” she quietly insists.

Rolling his eyes probably wouldn’t help anything. “Say you convince me. That change anything?”

She gives him a thin smile.

“You ashamed,” he finds himself asking.

There’s silence, and he wishes he could see her heart.

“There’s never been much I can do. He had a wife he loved and a child he would have given his own life for, if only he’d been given that choice. Maybe, I could have seduced him, but he wouldn’t have loved me for it.”

“Now, I could seduce him. It wouldn’t force him to stop drinking. It wouldn’t do anything to get rid of his awful pain, pain I can’t ever fully comprehend. I wasn’t a friend back then, but I saw the ring, the pictures in his wallet, and heard him talking with such pride and devotion about his wife working with him, his son going to kindergarten, and I did something good.”

When he pulls her against him, she tenses for a long moment before relaxing.

He wants to ask: Why Nate? Why that good ole Catholic boy, and why this self-loathing mess?

He doesn’t, because, doing so will only increase the chances of him being asked certain things one day. He knew who Damien was going in. When he first took the job, when he fell in bed, when he did things- he knew. Still did it. Falling in love, it’s not exactly a choice, but he had plenty of choices that, if he hadn’t made them, he wouldn’t have developed those feelings.

“That painting you stole for him, you still have it?”

“Not with me, no.” Detangling herself, she looks at him.

“You’re right, seducing him wouldn’t help anything. Let’s pretend he’s part of a con we’re running. We need him better for it to work. So, what do we give him or take from him to make him better?”

“The only thing I can think of that might help is if his old boss was made to pay, but, Eliot- He shot a gun at me once. It had rubber bullets, and in absolute fairness, I shot him first, but he never despised me. He wasn’t even all that condemning of my work, really. I’m not sure he could handle extracting certain types of payment against Blackpoole.”

“I wouldn’t let him go that far,” he promises. “So, should I call Hardison and Parker to talk about an intervention?”

“Yes,” she quietly answers.

…

Plopping down on Hardison’s lap, Parker nudges at his face with her _bare feet_.

“Parker, I swear to God, I’ll chop your feet off.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Hardison, do something about her!”

“What do you expect me to do, man?”

Parker smirks at him.

“You two are a nightmare.”

“I’ve made notecards for all of you, in case you forget your lines,” Sophie brightly says.

“You three are a nightmare,” he corrects himself.

Looking down at the notecards, he wonders what he’s even doing. He’s seen Nate’s heart, and the black’ll never fade; the scars and holes will never minimise. With all the drinking Nate’s been doing, there’s a possibility the size will always be too small and that it’ll break to the point it can’t be stitched back up.

He could go help Toby for a few months, and then-

Hardison laughs. “That’s amazing.”

Nodding, Parker wraps an arm around his neck. “What you did in Turkey wasn’t bad.”

“Yeah, but I wish I’d thought of…”

Huh, he thinks. Look at that.

…

“Thank you all,” Nate says. “And I’m sorry.”

“Hey, man, it ain’t your fault Sterling played so hard and dirty,” he responds.

Blackpoole is ruined, he helped get Old Man Nate out, and Bunny wasn’t in Hardison’s place. They made sure to get the complex and rest of the block evacuated.

Still, Sterling needs to pay someday for taking Hardison’s home.

“It’d be best if we scattered for a while,” Nate continues.

And for this.

…

He doesn’t find any tracking devices on him or in any of his luggage.

“You came at a good time,” Toby says. “I’ve finally gotten the funding. Your perspective in designing the courses will be a big help.”

“You sure you want to teach a bunch of criminals how to use knives and handle fire?”

“A troubled kid who got on the wrong side of the law isn’t necessarily a criminal. And even the ones who are, some of them will make the most out of a second chance.”

“When do we start?”

Moving his heart, big, only two medium-sized scars, no holes, a nice red shade, same as when he left Toby, off a mock-up menu, Toby hands it to him, and noticing it’s been done by hand, he says, “Toby, seriously, you need to get a computer.”

“I have a computer.”

Technically, yes, Toby does.

“I got a buddy who taught me how to use Photoshop. We’re going to find you a cheap laptop, and I’m gonna teach you.”

“Isn’t Photoshop expensive?”

“Not if you’re friends with this buddy.” At Toby’s look, he shakes his head. “He’s a good guy. Just a massive geek. Has contacts in everywhere from Adobe to call support centres in India.”

“Computers to him are what cooking is to us?”

“Yeah.”

…

Carrying in a load of tomatoes, Toby asks, “Do you know why so many homeless kids are- what’s the term nowadays? LGBT? Queer? Something else?”

“LGBT is usually safe. What parent wants-” Realising what he was about to say, he stops. “Some families are supportive. A lot aren’t. And it’s usually easier to toss the kid onto the street than risk a child abuse or murder charge. In some cases, the street looks a lot better to the kid than the beatings or words.”

Toby frowns. “It’s the politics.”

Unable to help his chuckle, he tries not to roll his eyes.

Toby comes from a union family, and though he still has some loyalty to the idea unions did a lot of good things, Toby takes an annoying amount of pride in being apolitical. ‘I’ll mind my private business, you mind yours,’ is something he claims more people should adopt.

Of course, that hadn’t stopped him from offering this thug of a kid lurking through his restaurant, “You look like a listener. Want some stale chilli or some slightly fresher mango pie while I try to figure out what exactly to put in a letter explaining why the city’s donation regulations are too strict?”

It’d been a weak moment, or maybe, it’d been one of those moments when fate or the Almighty or something had stepped in to make him make a choice he usually wouldn’t make.

Toby had talked through the letter, but somehow, he’d found himself talking, too.

He’d learned: The two scars were from Toby’s parents’ death and from a girl in middle-school who hurt his heart. Toby had a few relationships since then that had ended on a good note, but they’d ended due to him placing cooking above everything else. For all Toby thought everything was too politicised, he liked most protests; it was a challenge feeding them, but no matter what the police might say or do, he was going to try his best.

White power marches had been a hard limit, but there was one time one of them had collapsed due to diabetic complications, and denying a diet soda and some fruit along with some water for some of the others wasn’t something he could bring himself to do, and he still has a fairly large crack from that day.

“Speaking of people liking people, is there a special lady out there you’ve found?”

Trying not to laugh, he shakes his head. “Nah. I found a group of do-gooders. Was running with them, but we decided to take a break.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Toby squeezes his shoulder. “Do any of them like my Persian sauce?”

“I didn’t get around to trying it out.”

Hardison wouldn’t, and if he ever got Parker to try it, she might insist on mixing _yogurt_ with it. Nate and Sophie might enjoy it, but then, they’d likely guess someone important taught him how to make it.

“I’ll whip up this new soup one of the waitresses taught me to make last month. Are any of these friends vegetarians or halal-observant Muslims?”

“No, but one of them does have something of a taste for Dubai cuisine.”

…

He’s just finished making lunch for one of the students’ kid sister when Toby comes in. “Chef Eliot, there’s a woman out there asking for you by name.”

Turning the kid around, he slips a knife into his waistband, and ignoring the guilt at the look in Toby’s eyes, he heads out.

Once out, however, his heart steadies to a familiar beat. “Dammit, Parker! Don’t scare me like that!”

“How’d I scare you?”

Seeing Toby peeking out, he makes an ‘it’s okay’ motion before stopping the waiter coming over with a chocolate milkshake. “Give it to Tami if she finishes making those sandwiches by herself. Bring out the number nine.”

“I ordered that,” Parker protests. “And I have money!” She produces it. “Hardison said I had to actually pay for it, or you’d kill him, and then, me and him wouldn’t get to-”

“Parker, try a bite of this, and if you don’t like it, I’ll make you a chocolate milkshake myself.”

One bite, and her eyes light up.

Sending the knife back to the kitchen, he sits down. “What are you doing here?”

“Sophie has a new play.” She hands him a pamphlet. “Hardison thought you should know.”

“What’s the plan for after?”

“I was thinking that New Zealand diamond, but Hardison thinks we should go after some White House person to destroy some bill involving koala bears.”

“How’d you two find me?”

She shrugs. “I wasn’t even looking. Hardison sent me here. I don’t know how he found you.”

“Did he find you?”

“Not exactly.”

…

Sober Nate is now living above a bar, and more than this, Nate doesn’t want them in his life.

He can’t particularly blame him, but he was getting used to being part of a team before they had to scatter. If there are signs this’ll wreck Nate’s newfound soberity, he’ll go, but if not-

“I could get us hotel rooms,” Hardison offers. “Nice ones. Maybe suites, but-”

“Vents,” Parker says. “I want vents.”

“I can find my own place,” he says.

“Oh, good you haven’t left!” Sophie rushes over, and fear grips him. If they managed to get Nate killed- “I knocked Nate out, but in my defence, I thought he was the bloody thug who attacked him!”

…

They decide Nate likely doesn’t need a hospital, but just in case, Parker hangs herself upside down from the ceiling close to the couch.

Hardison gets Sophie settled into Nate’s bed, and then, says, “There’s one empty apartment here, and I have a sleeping bag.”

“I can find my-”

“Yeah, I know,” Hardison exasperatedly says. “You can find your own place. Look, man, I know you want to hang around here. Want to do rock-paper-scissors for who gets to sleep inside?”

“You have a tell.”

“Do not,” Hardison stubbornly insists.

“I’ll take the outside.”

…

He doesn’t take the outside, though, they both make use of it before crawling inside.

Hardison’s learned how to make him beg, and he thinks he should really be more scared or uneasy about this than he is. He’d settle for annoyance.

“Hey,” nuzzling him with a slightly fuzzy cheek, Hardison wraps more securely around him, “I missed you.”

 _Between me and Parker, I’m the only one who’ll give you the time of day, and that’s what you missed_ , goes through his head.

His heart pulses in guilt, and he hopes Hardison doesn’t see.

It’s not a fair thought, he’ll admit. There’s some unwelcome jealousy, but it’s not really a jealous thought, either.

“How’d you find me?”

Chuckling, Hardison doesn’t answer.

…

When he wakes up, Hardison isn’t in the apartment.

He goes to Nate’s, and there Hardison is with Parker.

It’s way too early to try to even attempt to figure out why the latter is dressed as a nun.

“I’m buying the building,” Hardison says. “I’ll take the apartment me and you slept in. And I’m kicking out a sex offender for you.”

“What kind of sex offender?” Back when he was a kid, an eighteen-year-old getting caught in the backseat with a seventeen or sixteen-year-old was only a crime if the girl really was there against her will, and what would be called indecent exposure now was usually just a drunken idiot pissing in public. A fine, maybe some community service, and it was done.

“I’m not going into details, but several two-year-olds were involved. Trust me, this guy deserves to go back to prison.”

Starting to make breakfast, he says, “Thanks, man.”

“Parker, there’s a sweet old lady in 3B whose family just got enough money to send Grandma to this retirement community in Florida she’s always dreamed of spending her twilight years at. And for Sophie, I’m sending this kid in 2C to this college she’s been working her ass off to save enough money for. She’ll move into the dorms by the end of next week.”

“We already have places of our own,” Parker says.

“Yeah, I know, but now, we all have a place here if we need or want it.”

“I’ll help you move Old Man Nate in,” he offers.

…

Parker ends up bringing Old Man Nate in, and he gets to chainsaw down a wall.

“One show only, no encores,” Nate grumpily reminds him.

“Don’t act like you haven’t been glad to have us around, helping people,” he says. “You couldn’t do this without us. Maybe you could find another band of thieves, criminals, but they wouldn’t be anything close to us.”

Sighing, Nate fixes another cup of coffee. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. The question is: How long do you realistically see yourself doing this, Eliot?”

“Realistically, some world leader could deploy a nuke tomorrow morning, and assuming there’s enough time for our country to respond, we deploy nukes against that country and several others just because. Won’t stop you, me, Sophie, Parker, and Hardison from all being nothin’ but molecules before noon hits.”

Fixing his own cup, he continues, “But today, this freckled-face second-generation Chinese-American got a full ride to botany school, and I’ll try to be around next weekend to see if she needs help carrying her boxes out. This old Italian lady is going to live the rest of her life in comfort near a sunny beach, and her sons will probably be here tomorrow to help her pack up and move.”

“So, I see myself doing this until something bad stops me or until I find something better.”

Shrugging, Nate pours the rest of his coffee out. “I’m going to bed. Try not to chainsaw anymore walls down.”

“Ain’t making any promises.”

Cleaning up the mess (Nate’s right; there _is_ a dishwasher), he heads over to Hardison’s. “Hey, man. Parker around?”

“She’s casing out the nunnery she stole the habit from. For the record, I didn’t know she had stolen it. But I think she likes the nun she stole it from, so, that’s probably good. Right?”

All he can do is shrug. “As much as I appreciate you getting rid of that scumbag, I’m not moving into the place until I get my own bed. It should be here by tomorrow. Can I crash here tonight?”

“Sure,” Hardison easily says. “Here.”

He catches a key. “Parker get one of these?”

“You really think she’d ever need one? Besides, she’d probably lose it like she did Nate’s car keys, and some axe murder stranger would have 24/7 access to my place.”

In Parker’s defence, they had told her to hide the keys.

“I have the security system set up, so, we should know when she comes in.”

“Sounds good. It okay if I have first shower?”

“Eliot. You don’t need to-” Hardison makes a motion with his hands. “You aren’t really a guest.”

He knows he will be if Hardison ever decides to actually try with a normal girl or man. If Hardison ever gives up secretly hoping for Parker and decides he wants more than a secret benefits-relationship with a person he constantly butts heads with on the job.

“Want to join me?”

“Not tonight, but if you want to share the bed instead of taking the sleeping bag, that’d be cool.”

“Sounds good,” he repeats. “Thanks, Hardison.”

…

“Eliot, I'm gonna ask you not to do anything violent,” Nate says.

Unable to help it, he’s hurt and offended by this, as well as slightly confused why Nate is bringing this up during breakfast with Sophie and an old girlfriend of hers.

“Hello, Nate.”

Sterling.

Tara is a laughing, gorgeous woman. Despite Sophie’s claims, he’s fairly sure Tara, big heart, more pink than red, no scars or holes but a fair amount of expertly concealed cracks, is a grifter, too.

Therefore, he’s not going to feel guilty for attacking Sterling in the middle of the bar. He knows Hardison and Nate will keep everyone out of the danger zone, and even if the others are annoyed, Parker is going to be happy. She’s talked even more than Hardison about how exactly Sterling should be tortured.

“It’s Maggie,” Sterling chokes out.

…

Upstairs, holding Tara’s hand, Sophie announces, “Yes, well, I lied. Tara will be helping us.”

“I will be,” is Tara’s arch reply.

“Of course, darling. Remember Pakistan? I’m calling that in.”

“Now, just a minute,” Nate protests.

“I hate to agree with Nate, but-”

“Shut up, Sterling,” Nate says.

Parker pokes Sophie. “Can Tara help us get Maggie out?”

“You bet your ass I can,” Tara says. “But what would be in it for me? And who exactly is Maggie?”

“Nate’s ex-wife,” he answers.

“Eliot had a thing with her,” Hardison adds.

He knows how to kill a man with a pillow.

He won’t, but he does know how.

“Dammit, Hardison, I met her for coffee one time for a con!”

Showing too much amusement, Sophie takes the pillow away.

“I’m just saying, no offence, Nate, but-”

“Hardison, finish that sentence, and Eliot gets the pillow back,” Nate says.

Tara looks a combination of amused, excited, and fond, and Sterling looks as if he’s just walked into a den of insanity.

He decides, if Tara wants to stick around for a while after this, they can probably make something work.

…

In Russia, he and Sterling end up sitting on a park bench, and he knew he should have protested harder against having anything to do with Sterling on this case.

“You don’t fit,” Sterling says. “The others- this new Nate, I can see. Parker’s most violent act was blowing up an empty house. Hardison is an annoying, cheeky git, but he doesn’t have a violent bone in his body. But you, tell me, did Nate know what he was getting into when you were recruited to be on his team?”

He knows Sterling’s earbud is out, and he takes his own out. “I don’t know. You’d know all about not fitting, though, wouldn’t you? For all I’d be happy to see you have every bone broken in your body, I don’t blame you for the three days. You should try not to blame yourself, Sterling.”

There’s a familiar fear in Sterling’s eyes, and he can’t help but relish in it.

“He’ll never know,” he promises. “Not from me, at least. Can’t really speak for Sophie. Or I guess you. It’s a trump card, isn’t it? You couldn’t have done anything about Blackpoole denying the claim, and you knew it. But you could look away when a painting was stolen. You could have not found it despite knowing where it was. And you could get a nasty scar when your best friend lost his boy, when you lost your best friend.”

“Good job on covering it up, though. It’d take someone who’s been in the game a long time to spot that it has been.”

There’s silence.

“Men like me help the world,” Sterling says. “Men like Nate used to be. The world would be a far better place without the likes of you in it.”

“I won’t disagree with that last part, and for all I heard about Nathan Ford back in the day, I never met that man. But you don’t help the world, Sterling. You tried to do right by your best friend, but otherwise, you enforce a corrupt system. Serve the rich. Punish the desperate. You want to be on top, and hey, in all sincerity, you likely will be one day. Out of the two of us, though, one can claim honesty, and that one ain’t you.”

Slipping his earbud back in, he walks away.

…

He knew Russia wouldn’t be the end of Sterling (the bastard was invited to join _Interpol_ , and of course, he accepted), but sitting in a hotel room with the others, he’s realised he might have truly underestimated the bastard.

“Let me see if I have this straight,” Tara says. “The FBI is protecting Mayor Culpepper, because, he’s an informant. He’s running with arms dealers that the FBI isn’t interested in. And now, Sterling is after us, meaning me along with all of you, so that he can throw us all in jail.”

“Pretty much,” Nate responds.

“Why now?” Hardison tosses Parker a chocolate bar. “Sterling could have struck at us any time these last three something years. He knows who we are and what we do.”

“Because,” Nate heavily says, “he wanted to go big. We managed to walk into this trap ourselves. We got ourselves on FBI radar all by ourselves, and he’s going to take advantage of that.”

“Greece is lovely this time of year,” Sophie says. “Or maybe Japan. You can stay in that villa you like so much, Tara, and after we bring down Culpepper-”

Now, Tara looks as if she’s the one trapped in a den of insanity. “After? You’re still- Seriously? You and the others are going to white whale Culpepper?”

“White whale,” Parker asks.

“Old, boring-ass book written by a white dude,” Hardison says.

He likes Moby Dick, but since many old, white men would share Hardison’s opinion on the matter…

“It needs to be done, Tara. I don’t expect you to understand-”

“Good, because, I don’t. That being said,” Tara bumps her shoulder against Sophie’s, “this should be fun. Just promise me there’s a plan where I get out even if taking down Culpepper fails.”

…

“Okay, I’m on my way,” Tara says over the comms.

On the boat, Sophie says, “Good. We’ve got Nate.”

He undoes Nate’s cuffs. “They hurt you too bad?”

“I’ll survive. You four okay?”

“I pushed Tara off a building,” Parker brightly says.

Managing not to laugh, he really wishes he’d been there to see this in person.

“Yes, and her frankly unnerving joy in trying to run you over with her car aside, she’s very grateful,” Sophie says. “Come on, she should be here with our ride in five minutes.”

“Where’s she landing,” Nate asks. “Actually, should I ask: Is she doing the flying?”

“Of course not.” Sophie practically rolls her eyes. “Nate, Tara has nerves of steel, but she couldn’t even properly hit Parker with a car. Though, in fairness, Parker did still have her harness on. No, we hired an old friend to be our pilot.”

They get briefly separated, he sees the chopper approaching in the distance, and when Sterling appears with agents, he reminds himself he will not kill. He’s getting all of them to the chopper, and he’s doing so without-

Nate handcuffs himself to the railing, and inside his chest, his heart stutters so badly he’s back to being a messed up nineteen-year-old kid who just learned what the true cost of serving his country means.

I should have seen it, is all that goes through his head.

Nate conning them is obvious now, and he should have-

He moves to get Nate, he’ll drag the fu-

Catching his eyes, Nate glances down, and a new wave of pain hits him.

This likely wasn’t in the plan. (If it was, Nate’s death will be a slow, torturous process.)

Nate’s been shot. If he gets medical attention in the next thirty minutes, he has a decent chance of survival, but making a stop at a hospital on the chopper will just bring Sterling right back to them.

“You guys are the most honourable people I have ever met in my life. You've become my family. My only family. I won't forget that.” Nate’s eyes bore into his. “Now, get 'em on the chopper. Please. Now!”

…

Tara’s left for Europe, and since Sterling is temporarily off their backs, they go to Nate’s place.

“I want to break in and kill him,” Parker says.

“Should we scatter again,” Hardison quietly asks.

“It’s up to you. All of you,” Sophie says. “But with or without you, I’m getting him out.”

“Let’s break it down, then,” Parker responds. “Hardison, do your,” she waves towards the screens, “thing. Unless you want to leave.”

There’s desperation in her voice, and if Hardison leaves-

“You got it.” Hardison starts turning the computers on.

“We should probably make sure to temporarily neutralise Sterling before we do anything. Getting Nate out might be easy, but keeping him out will be harder. Sophie, what do you think would be the best…”

Finding himself looking at Parker, he feels a strange blooming in his heart.

He hadn’t realised it until now, but in some ways, she’s become like Nate. Hardison is the smartest out of all of them, Sophie’s the best with people, but Parker is turning into a decent planner.

Her heart is out on the table, and he has the urge to pick it up, to stroke it.

He doesn’t want to hurt it, but still, these thoughts are bizarre and inappropriate. If anyone of them will ever have the right to lay hands on her heart, it’ll be Hardison.

“Let’s steal a Nate,” Parker says.

“Here’s to that.” He raises his beer.

…

Two weeks after they start working on their plan, he’s on a coffee run when his senses tell him someone familiar but dangerous is nearby.

Finding a park bench, he sends a text, and then, he waits.

Shortly before he left Damien, a new woman came onto the scene, and he had a bad feeling about her back then, but since he was resolved to leave-

She comes out of the shade of a tree, and it’s still as creepy as he remembers.

“Moreau didn’t send me.” She sits down.

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“He’s missed you.”

“I haven’t thought about him at all.”

She scoffs. “It’d be nice to believe that. Help me take him down, and I’ll get your friend, Nathan Ford, free.”

“What’s really going on?” Shifting, he studies her. “You’ve never been right, but you’re not stupid or sloppy, either. For all you know, I contact Damien and tell him all about what you just said.”

She hands him a badge, and from what he can tell, it’s real.

“Have your Hardison friend check it out. I’ve been undercover for almost five years. I was glad when you left. I kept an eye out, waiting for the time when it would be best to strike. Can you imagine my surprise when you started running with these people? Criminals, yes, but not bad people. Helping those justice has failed.”

“The money’s been good, and I owe Nate a debt. He wouldn’t be the first person I broke a debt to. Left it unfulfilled. I’m not getting involved back with Moreau.”

“You can’t run forever. Vows made sometimes must be, can only be, broken in blood.”

That answers the question of whether she knew, he sourly thinks.

“I leave in two days. Come here if you decide to accept my offer. If you don’t, you will regret it. Take those words however you want. It’s not precisely a threat, but it is true.”

…

He considers talking to Hardison, but Hardison would definitely know- Hardison would wonder certain things.

Sophie is off-the-table, too.

Finding himself sitting in the living room with Parker, he takes a breath. “Hey, Parker.”

She glances over from the safe she’s cracking.

“You ever faced a real dilemma? Have you ever come across a choice that you just didn’t know how to make?”

She’s quiet for so long he thinks she just isn’t going to answer, but then, coming over, she says, “Yes. When Archie visited last time, that was one of them. But before that-” She takes a breath. “This girl in one of my foster homes was really- mean. She always tried to get me in trouble, and she said a lot of stuff that I didn’t care about, but I could tell it would hurt other people.”

“And one day, I found out something about her, and if I told, it would have been bad for her.”

“Did you tell?”

“No.” She frowns. “I don’t know why. I wanted to. But these other feelings wouldn’t leave me alone whenever I thought about doing it.”

“Good. You should usually listen to those feelings.”

“She never stopped being mean.”

“Some people don’t. Do you regret it?”

“I don’t know. Eliot, this isn’t a dilemma for me. Nate said we’re family, and family doesn’t let family rot in prison.”

“Parker, I promise you, I wasn’t thinking this was a dilemma for you. I was just- thinking of Nate. The choice he made wasn’t an easy one, and I was just wondering if you’ve ever had to make a hard one, too.”

She leans against him. “I don’t think even he’s had to make some like you have. Maybe Sophie, but she’d never tell.”

“Actually, most of my choices have been easy.”

…

After Parker falls asleep on Nate’s couch, he walks Hardison back to Hardison’s apartment.

Then, he kisses him.

Later, Hardison says, “Hey, Eliot, don’t get me wrong, it was good. But it also felt a lot like goodbye.”

“It’s not goodbye. Go to sleep, Hardison.”

Hardison does, and he’s tempted to get out of bed, but the number of times he’s going to get to feel Hardison wrapped around him has just become severely limited.

…

Once the four of them finish breakfast, he gets Hardison to recheck the building for bugs.

Pinning up a picture, he says, “We’re calling her ‘The Italian’.”

“Who is she,” Parker asks.

“She’s someone I- ‘knew’ might not be the best word, but we were aware of one another back in the day.” He writes down Damien’s name. “She wants to take him down. She’s offered to help us get Nate free if we help her.”

Parker raises her hand, and he tries not to sigh. “Did he do something to her?”

“I don’t know. Moreau doesn’t have much use for women. He’s been married twice. His first wife died, and I’ll give him this: It wasn’t his doing. His second wife flits from winter palace to winter palace with their two daughters. She hates any climate above 20 degrees. His son’s in an English boarding school.”

“He rarely uses women for mules or as a truly active part of his business, but he does frequently pick up pretty women to travel with him. Having them around cultivates a certain image of him towards the men he does business with. The Italian has been occasionally joining these batches of women for the last few years.”

“Okay, so, he likely isn’t sexually abusing these women,” Sophie says. “But what about his men?”

“It depends on who his enforcer is. The enforcer largely controls the men.”

“Obviously, I want Nate out,” Hardison says. “But the question has to be asked: What about Culpepper and the gun runners?”

“She can probably make it where they stay in prison.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sophie says. “Them. Is there any other reasons we shouldn’t consider her offer?”

“We’ve all heard about Moreau. This woman, she isn’t what I’d call trustworthy. Now, I believe she does want him brought down, but I could be wrong, and I have no idea why she might want this. She claims she’s working undercover for,” he writes down the agency name.

The three all groan.

“Yeah. If she is, she probably could help. Or she could massively screw us over. And when it comes to Damien- whatever you’ve heard, he’s worse. Whatever you think he can do, he can do more. Whatever weaknesses you think he might have, chances are very good they won’t be able to be used effectively against him.”

“Did you ever run into him back then,” Parker asks.

He’d thought Hardison was bad, but he’s starting to realise she and Nate are the real ones to worry about. Hardison just has a disturbing talent for reading him when he’d rather not be read, but the questions she’s asking, the type Nate occasionally did, they’re the kind that force him to lie.

All of them, Hardison included, would angrily point out he’s not being forced, he’s choosing to.

“I always made it a priority to know where he was and what he was doing. Some things, some people, they shouldn’t be approached without extreme caution, and you know me. I’m often cautious.”

Hardison snorts.

The urge to lay certain things out washes through him. _You think you’ve seen me more than naked, Hardison? You haven’t; that was Damien. You’re good, but_ -

He doesn’t even know for sure how the thought ends.

The first time with Damien, he knew Damien owned him, and he’d been okay with this. More than okay. Damien knew him far better than Hardison had.

Hardison’s too safe to ever be the threat Damien was, and he does try to be cautious, but he’s never been one for safety.

“Why did this Italian approach you,” Sophie asks.

“Probably a combination of us having met before and me being the easiest to access. She’s kind of creepy, alright? She’ll quietly appear and disappear. But Hardison has the whole building and bar rigged so that she’d likely pop up on his phone the second she entered, Parker is usually in some air vent somewhere, and Sophie, sweetie, you and her would be fighting over who can be the most dramatic in no time. Plus, your acting students can be a handful.”

Hardison returns his fist bump.

“You should all learn to be more appreciative of the arts.”

“Maggie,” Parker suddenly says. “What do we do about her? She’s been visiting Nate every week.”

“First, we need to decide if we take this Italian chica’s offer.”

“Seriously, Hardison,” he demands.

Hardison simply shrugs.

“Let’s put it to a vote, shall we? If we don’t, then, we find another way.”

“There’s four of us,” he points out. “What if it’s a tie?”

“I think-” Parker pauses. “I think, if one of us objects, then, we shouldn’t do it. Doesn’t matter why.”

“Everything I’ve found on her, her story to Eliot checks out,” Hardison says. “Question is, Eliot: Do you think this is a good or bad idea?”

“Getting involved with anything involving Damien Moreau is always a bad idea.”

“Yeah, we got that. But do you think it’d be worth it or not?”

“You all need to understand: I might not be able to protect you. I’ll try my best, I swear that, but I might not be able to.”

“I say we do it,” Parker says.

Sophie nods. “Yes, I agree.”

Hardison’s silent for a long moment. “Me, too. Yeah, I’m in.”

…

After the meeting, Hardison grabs his arm. “I want to talk to you privately, okay?”

They go to Hardison’s apartment, and tossing him a beer, Hardison says, “Retrieval specialist.”

He looks over.

“That’s what you are. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely grateful for the times you’ve saved my ass and especially glad for the times you’ve looked out for Parker, Sophie, and Nate, but hitter and retrieval specialist are what you are.”

“I’m not having this conversation with you, Hardison.”

Hardison sits down. “Okay. I just want to remind you who you are. You owe Nate a debt, I get that, and hell, we probably need you if there’s any chance of getting him safely out. But it seems like you already have one foot out the door, and it’s not gonna do any of us any good if you keep staying past- We all know you’re going to leave eventually. It’s been accepted. Don’t force yourself to stay longer than you want to.”

He heard a song on the radio once, Walkaway Joe, and he thought of Aimee.

He didn’t think of Damien.

“You’re right: I owe Nate a debt. And after he’s free, there’s a chance it’ll be time for me to leave, but I need you to understand, to believe, when I say I’m all in, then, I’m all in.” Going over, he touches Hardison’s cheek. “I’m all in, okay?”

Hardison nods. “Okay.”

…

She sits down beside him.

“We’re in.”

“Is this you or them speaking?”

“All of us. We had a vote.”

“You didn’t tell them, did you? About what you were to Damien Moreau?”

“What he was to me,” he corrects. “You think because we slept together I ever had any real power over him? You think because I had affection for him that he ever truly returned it? He’s a sociopath. That’s how his heart has stayed so pure.”

If he thought his relationship (not really an accurate term, but it’ll do) would help the others, he’d tell them.

All telling them would do is make them distrust and doubt him.

“They want to meet you,” he continues.

“I won’t tell them.”

“It doesn’t matter. People don’t trick Damien unless they have, at least, the potential to be as bad as he is.” He grabs her arm. “Let me make it clear: They die, and I will hunt you down. I will spend my last days devoted to that if I have to. Right now, you’re the bigger threat to them than he is. If I need to, I will kill him without hesitation.”

“Because you love them so?” She asks, and the usual mocking lilt to her words has been replaced with genuine curiosity.

He lets go of her arm. “Stop by the bar before you leave.”

…

“Are we okay, Eliot?”

“You conned your team, Nate. We’re on Damien Moreau’s tail, because of you.” Seeing what Nate’s about to say, he continues, “Don’t. We had a vote, we decided. But we decided this because of you.”

Nate pours another shot of whiskey. “You had a chance to walk away.”

“Dammit, Nate, you and Hardison- Parker has a chance at surviving. She can use a taser, she can climb as far up or down as she needs to go, and her flight-or-fight instinct is almost always one of those. She doesn’t freeze. Sophie can talk her way out of anything. I remember when you were drunk all the time. Even when you’re sober, though, you ain’t much of a fighter. And Hardison, I honestly don’t understand how he hasn’t been shot and killed yet.”

Sitting down, he lets out a breath. “We all have our roles. You conned your team, us, to take mine. Something bad goes down, I take the hits.”

“You know I needed you to get them to the chopper.”

“There were other ways to deal with Sterling.”

“Maybe, but-” And Nate pulls out his heart.

He finds himself staring.

It’s still bad, but the once black side is now gray, and some of the holes have closed up as much as possible.

“I didn’t say what I said just to get you and the others on that chopper,” Nate quietly says. “Even if you’d signed on to be protector at the beginning, you don’t get to say whether not the others are willing to sacrifice themselves, too. By the way, how’s yours holding up?”

He takes it out. “It’s been worse.”

“I need to know if we’re good.”

“Yeah.” He downs a shot. “I’m going to trust you with them, and you’re not going to make me regret it.”

…

“Why,” Nate asks, “do you have a rice polisher, soy milk maker, and combi steamer in Parker’s apartment?”

“Because, I don’t know if you noticed, but boy likes to cook,” is the still hasn’t had anything but orange soda in over eight hours Hardison’s reply.

“All the screens plus your kitchen appliances make it a potential fire hazard for me to use them here, and I figured they’d be safest with Parker. She’ll never use them, and thieves are unlikely to ever get them. No, Hardison, stop trying to scrape the-”

“It’s green gunk,” Hardison outright whines.

“Dammit, Hardison, it’s-”

“Hardison, take one bite, and if you don’t like it, you can scrape the rest off.”

Nate ignores his glare.

“Hmm, not bad,” Hardison mutters.

“I want more chocolate,” Parker declares.

“No. You’ve had chocolate pancakes and chocolate milk. Drink the shake I made you.”

“But it has green gunk, too.”

“This is your fault,” he informs Nate. “Do you know how much crap they started eating after you went away? Okay, in some ways, it was even worse than when we all first met. Hardison-” Seeing Hardison is grabbing the bowl of grapes, he tries not to sigh. “Oh. Never mind.”

“By the way, I won a breadmaker in this online contest, but I think it might be shipped here,” Hardison says. “If so, just let me know.”

“Will do,” Nate agrees.

He pulls Parker aside. “I’m gonna need a favour.”

“Steal Hardison’s breadmaker?”

He has a brief moment of doubt, but then, he thinks of all the things Hardison might _do_ with it. “I’ll let you have an extra glass of chocolate milk for the rest of the week.”

“Deal,” she agrees.

Sophie comes in, and unsurprisingly, she has Nate’s favourite coffee order. “I’ve found a new client. You’re going to hate this job!”

He probably shouldn’t laugh at Nate’s despairing groan.

…

“We might come face-to-face with Moreau soon,” Nate said earlier.

He desperately hopes he can get access to Moreau before they can, but if he can’t-

“It’s getting closer and closer to goodbye for you, isn’t it,” Hardison says.

“Shut up and go to sleep, Hardison.”

“Make me a promise.”

Opening his eyes, he looks over.

“Seriously, make Parker something delicious to eat before you head out. She’ll be strong, but it’ll still hurt.”

Somehow, he doesn’t think delicious food will be enough to stop her from going after him if certain things happen or come out.

Lately, he’s been thinking about how easy it would be to kill them all again.

It’s easier to think of Damien. Damien never made him feel like this. Damien was good, he’ll never be able to convince himself otherwise, and once, Damien was the best.

Even with the developed familiarity, Hardison keeps finding new ways to take him apart and put him back together again.

If Parker ever decides she wants sex and wants it with Hardison, she’ll be in good hands.

No matter what he tries to think or not think of, however, he can only run from certain facts for so long.

Hardison is brave in a way he wishes Hardison wasn’t when faced with people pointing guns. Hardison once insisted on helping stop a crazy survivalist group from setting off bombs instead of getting to safety. Hardison grew up far worse than he did but still managed to stay kind and more-or-less on the right side of morality.

Parker is outright fearless most of the time. She can find humour in the damnedest things. And for all she often doesn’t understand people, she has a big metaphorical heart when confronted with those suffering.

He doesn’t think of kissing her or anything more (thank God), but sometimes, he imagines her lying curled up against him on the other side of Hardison’s bed. Of holding her hand, of letting her play with his heart. Of gently touching and holding hers along with Hardison’s.

It was lucky enough Hardison was attracted back to him. He knows Parker never would return any such feelings he tries not to have and not to acknowledge when the not having fails.

Next to him, Hardison is asleep.

The TV flickers, and silently cursing Parker, he starts to shake Hardison awake, but Parker calls out, “Hardison, I’m stealing some condoms to make water-balloons! Don’t go outside until morning. Oh, and when you talk- see Eliot, tell him Sophie says he needs to stock up his condom mirror.”

“Righ’, got it,” Hardison mutters. “Eliot, condoms, water-balloons.”

He hears her leaving, and for all it used to bother him when he and Hardison still used condoms for Hardison to keep his in the bathroom, he’s suddenly glad.

He’s less glad he’s going to have to find a way to have a talk with Parker about how guys should keep condoms in the bedroom, and if she ever needs some from his apartment, his night-stand drawer is where to find them.

…

Seeing Damien is largely an inevitability.

He hasn’t been much for praying in a long time. He understands why Hardison and Nate aren’t, either, but some part of him hopes they are praying this doesn’t happen.

Why would they, always pops into his head when he hopes this. They’ve heard stories. They’ve never directly dealt with or been on the receiving end of Moreau.

At the hotel, Hardison chatters about his plan to make contact, and some part of him wishes Parker were here instead.

The rest of him knows Hardison is the better choice. Parker would get them both killed. She’d say or do the wrong thing, and he wouldn’t be able to protect her.

They’re stopped, and stepping in front of Hardison, he finds himself staring at one of Damien’s mooks.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Me? I’m Eliot Spencer.”

He can’t see Hardison, but he can feel the recoiling shock and confusion radiating from him.

When they get to the pool, the Italian isn’t among the newest batch of women, and Chapman has clearly climbed the ranks.

“They gave you the job?”

Damien never particularly cared for black-hearted Chapman, but privately, he’ll admit Chapman isn’t a bad choice. Chapman loves to kill and likes to feel important. There’s no ambition for much more. As long as someone powerful is protecting him and letting him satisfy his bloodlust on a regular basis, he’ll be loyal enough.

“There was an opening,” Chapman answers.

Damien steps out of the sauna with his heart clipped to his robe. “That’s no way to treat an old friend.”

Guns are put away, and he realises, seeing and smelling Damien again, hearing his voice, his heart is much steadier in his chest than he’d expected it to be.

“Damien,” he says, and when Hardison shifts loudly, that’s when his heart reacts.

There’s a large crack on Damien’s heart, and Damien’s scar hasn’t gotten any thinner. Otherwise, it’s still pristine red and large.

He’s called Damien a sociopath more than once, but the scar’s always been in the back of his mind. He knows how Damien got it.

What caused the crack, he can’t help but wonder.

…

Hardison is handcuffed to a chair, and drinking, Damien studies them intently. “You work alone.”

“Things change.”

“Is this one of your retrieval jobs, Eliot? Tell me, whose Snoopy lunchbox do I have?”

Of course, Hardison reacts, thankfully silently, and he realises he needs to stop telling people he’s had a continuing sexual relationship with that story.

“It’s not a retrieval. I’m escorting the middleman. I’m contracted to make sure he gets in and out with the offer.”

Using his horrible accent, Hardison starts to talk, and it’s almost a relief when Damien interrupts, “I don’t know you.” Then, Damien looks at him. “I do know you. We could talk.”

“I ain’t much on talking, Moreau.”

His heart and brain both realise how stupid this is as soon as the words are out, and he starts mentally counting as soon as the chair containing Hardison hits the water.

“I’m sure you told your clients I don’t do business with strangers.”

“That’s why I’m here. To vouch for him.”

“He must be an impressive man for you to vouch for.”

“I never told anybody about you. I guarantee the same confidentiality for all my clients. What I can tell you is: They’re overseas. You sell it to international buyers, it leaves U.S. soil immediately. No trace back to you.”

“That’s not an issue. What else you got?”

“What do you want?”

Sipping his drink, Moreau looks past him, and Hardison’s heart is in his chest. If he’s stopped breathing, there’s still 40 seconds before revival without permanent brain damage comes.

“It’s not him you’re afraid of. But you are afraid.”

“His girlfriend and her mother helped my nephew get medical treatment a few years back. They’re not the type who wants to get on the bad side of you, but I don’t bring her future son-in-law back home, and- well.”

Moreau tosses the key into the pool. “A show of good faith. Kill this annoying General for me, and I’ll know you’re serious about getting this boy into the auction.”

Relieved to hear Hardison swimming up, he hopes Hardison didn’t hear that.

It might not matter if Hardison thinks Moreau is racist, but at the same time- In some ways, Moreau is worse. Moreau doesn’t judge people by their skin colour; he judges them as useful or not, potential ally or victim. Hopefully, right now, Moreau is seeing this overconfident, 20-something kid who likely charmed some overprotected rich girl with an overindulgent mother into falling for him, and as long as the kid gets back to his girlfriend and her mother, Moreau isn’t going to have to ever spare another thought towards him.

…

Hardison insists on driving, and when they get to the park, he immediately demands, “Tell them what you did, Eliot.”

Parker is poking at Hardison’s wet clothes, and Sophie is digging through her purse for something.

Nate is looking at him with sharp eyes.

“You risked my life. Tell.”

“We're in. Moreau's gonna give me the details of the auction tomorrow.”

Sophie gets Hardison sat down next to Parker, and handing him some chewable vitamin C tablets, she asks, “You? Why is he giving you the details?”

“Hey, Eliot worked with Moreau back in the day. A lot.” Swallowing the tablets, Hardison glares. “Tell them.”

Nate stands up. “We've been chasing Moreau for six months, and you didn't tell us.”

The excuses that come out sound weak and pathetic to his own ears, and finally, he bursts out with, “We're out of our league, Nate. Every one of Moreau's men has innocent blood on their hands, every one of ‘em. Every one of ’em- are worse than me. You think you know what I've done? The worst thing I ever did in my entire life I did for Damien Moreau. And I- I'll never be clean of that.”

Taking his heart out, he angles it so that they can clearly see the blackened biggest hole. “It started to break, and I managed to physically stop it.”

As a kid, he never believed the fact that bad people, their hearts don’t tend to break near as often as good peoples. But he’s learned from personal experience that not only is this true but the scars, holes, and cracks they get usually aren’t as bad, either. When Chapman dies, after his heart turns gray, there probably won’t be many markings on it. Maybe none.

“What did you do,” Parker asks.

He wonders if telling her, telling all of them, would- It’d affect Hardison’s heart for sure. He can’t imagine it wouldn’t affect Parker and Sophie’s to some extent. Nate- might be okay, right up until Nate takes in the damage inflicted on them.

If he has to tell, he will, but he finds himself begging aloud that he doesn’t.

“Look, we all have a past,” Sophie says. “You don't have to tell us anything, Eliot. But we've learned the hard way we've got to be straight with each other.”

…

Damien’s fled to San Lorenzo.

He knows Damien’s wife and the kids will be okay. Damien dutifully set more than enough money and property aside in her name to ensure she’ll never want for anything, and the kids all have generous trusts.

Hardison has been angrily subdued around him.

They’re sitting in Nate’s apartment with Nate sleeping upstairs and Sophie and Parker having left.

“It wasn’t goodbye,” Hardison notes. “It was guilt. Massive, extreme guilt.”

“You knew I had a past.”

“Like Sophie said, we all have a past. I didn’t lie, and don’t. Don’t even try. You lied. I was pushed into a damn pool, handcuffed to a chair, because of you.”

“When I was about four or five, I pushed a little girl who was annoying me off a playscape, and she twisted her ankle. I’m not proud of that. It was wrong, and I still don’t know what the hell- But you know, I’ve never laid my hands on a girl or woman again. I never told anyone that before, but if that girl grew up to be a criminal mastermind who held a grudge against me, I woulda told you and everyone else I care about in my life.”

“Hardison, look, man-” He doesn’t know-

“We’re not good,” Hardison quietly says. “I’m helping Nate finish this, and then, I’m taking a break. I never asked for anything from you. And again, Eliot, don’t be a smart-ass. Anything truly important. I never asked you to tell me your secrets, I never asked you to be there for me outside of the job. And on the job, I trusted you to- I didn’t think I’d ever be pushed into a damn pool to almost drown by your old boss, because, you decided not to tell me and the others things that we needed to know about him.”

“I trusted you in this one area,” Hardison continues. “And I never did anything to betray you in that area. You might not have always liked how I did my job, but I did it well enough that it was always done with none of us severely hurt or worse. I did it without ever withholding valuable information.”

Hardison leaves.

…

On the plane to San Lorenzo, Parker says, “I would have told you to tell us.”

“I know.”

She leans against him. “I don’t understand.”

“You and me, we’re built different from the others, but we’re also different from each other. You’ve felt guilt before, haven’t you?”

She nods.

“But not really much for all the thieving you’ve done, right? The people you’ve tasered?”

“No. Why- I know regular people think I should, but do you?”

“No. I thank God you don’t. Look, Parker, you’ve been hurt before. There’s a lot wrong with you, just like there’s a lot wrong with all of us, but your hurt, it didn’t turn you into a bad person. Whatever regular people say,” he squeezes her hand, “you aren’t a bad person, darling. I was scared. Scared you all would see certain things about me.”

“And-” He has to gather himself. “I could deal with y’all telling me to leave, but I couldn’t deal with any of you going up against Damien Moreau without me around. I made a mistake, and Hardison got tossed handcuffed in a pool, but none of you are killers. Murderers. I am. And if I have to, I’ll kill Moreau.”

“Don’t,” she says. “Not unless you absolutely have to. And I forgive you.”

Inside his chest, a crack heals, and he’d forgotten how painful the first few seconds of healing can be.

…

When they get back from San Lorenzo, Nate sits down next to him, and he wonders if Nate’s going to try to figure out if he knows Nate and Sophie finally slept together.

“Are you okay with what happened to Moreau?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

Shrugging, Nate leans back. “I don’t doubt your loyalty, Eliot. As has been pointed out, I still refer to Maggie as my wife as opposed to my ex most of the time. None of us have had to take down someone we once loved. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He leans back, too. “Plan A was to kill him before any of this happened. I was really hoping I’d be able to pull off Plan A. Whatever I felt for him, he was never family. He’s never been a good person. Honourable in his own way under very certain circumstances, but I’d rather have people like you and the others in the world my nephew lives in than him.”

Nate nods. “Give Hardison some time. He’s stronger than we sometimes give him credit for, and- the hurt’ll heal. He’ll miss you. It might take time, but he’ll see that he’s always known you.”

“Thanks, Nate.”

…

He heads to Parker’s apartment, and seeing Hardison is helping her paint her door, he starts to leave.

“And when we meet back up, you can tell me from the tracker data how many seconds it took-”

“Parker, girl, I’m not putting trackers on you anymore.”

“But I need you to tell me how many seconds it took me to fall off the skyscrapper. And you shouldn’t listen to Sophie or Nate or Eliot, it’s not creepy! I’ve always thought it was fun to find and destroy them, but I won’t this time.”

Hardison sighs. “Look, Parker, I may not- I’ll give you a timer, okay? It’ll show you how long it took for you to parachute or rappel down.”

“Except, then, you won’t know how fast I was until we meet again.”

“Dammit, Hardison!” Going over, he grabs him, and someone’s probably going to bitch at him for the paint splattered all over the hallway walls and Parker’s clothes. “We’re talking privately right now! Parker, finish the door yourself or get someone else to help you.”

He drags Hardison to Hardison’s apartment, and pushing him inside, he glares once the door is shut.

“Hey, Eliot. Sure, I’ll be glad to talk seeing as how you asked so nicely and-”

He chucks his heart at Hardison, and once Hardison realises exactly what it is, Hardison freezes.

Eventually, Hardison very carefully sets it down on the nearby table.

“So much for you being a genuinely good guy who just wants to look out for her and love her.”

“What? Who? What? Parker? Sophie? Your heart?” Hardison’s expression is unbearably lost.

“I get that you’re pissed with me, but trying to cut Parker out of your life-”

“You think a lot of yourself, don’t you? For the record, I was pissed. I’m really not anymore. And don’t you dare say I’m- that I’d ever do anything to deliberately hurt Parker. Yeah, you can kill me in three seconds with your pinky, but you say stuff like that, and to hell will I let it stand.”

“Newsflash, then, Hardison, you’ve become her best friend, and the closest thing she had to a dad kept her a dirty secret from his real family. You disappear from her life, and-”

“She can find me whenever she wants. Girl has impressive skills. And I’d never turn her away. But yeah, I’ve made some decisions, and you only play a part in them. I’m a hacker running with a thief, a hitter, a mastermind, and a grifter. I’m good at what I do. But I’m starting to see myself through all of y’all’s eyes.”

“Hardison-”

“I guess some part of me didn’t believe ‘we’ll all walk one day’. It’s been fun, man. We’ve done some great things. Now, though, I’m going to try to find some place where maybe someone actually needs me. And one of the requirements for me staying will definitely be me never ending up drowning in the bottom of a pool. Or at the very least, the reason for me being there won’t be someone placing his secrets over my actual life.”

“If Damien hadn’t thrown you the key, I was going to get you out.”

“How comforting,” is the sarcastic retort. “I’m so comforted hearing that. So very comforted.”

“You aren’t the only one who’s seen me more than naked.”

“What?” Hardison throws his hands up. “And it’s back to this? Newsflash, Eliot: I know you’ve had sex before me. Hell, I know you’ve had sex with other people while we were having sex. Trust me, this isn’t relevant. I haven’t had sex with Nate, Sophie, or Parker, and if any of them did this, I’d still feel this way. Hell, I felt this way on a smaller scale when Nate conned us, but in his case, it was him who took a bullet, not any of us choking underwater. So, you know, I was inclined to be a little more understanding.”

“Dammit, Hardison, use that brain of yours to realise-!”

“Realise what?”

“That-”

Something must show in his face or stance, or maybe, Hardison’s idiotic genius brain has just finally kicked in, because, he sees it hit Hardison.

“Oh. You and Moreau. You were, uh, you don’t have to tell me anything, but-”

“Let’s sit down,” he says.

“I’ll get us something to drink, first.”

Hardison gets him a juice and an orange soda for himself, and they sit down.

“After I got out of the army, I was drifting. I did some bad things, and that led to more bad things. Moreau needed a bodyguard. The money was good. It was supposed to be temporary. The thing about Damien Moreau, though, is-” He pauses.

“I was interested from the start, but I tried my best to be a professional. I don’t know if he realised or not, but eventually, he became interested back. What’s important to me that you understand, Hardison, is: His list of sins don’t involve hurting me. He’s a bad person. He’s done horrible things. He deserves worse than that cell in San Lorenzo.”

“But he never forced sex, and when we were together- he’s not a sexual sadist. He wanted normal stuff, stuff I wanted, too. And the terrible things I did for him, I did those, because, it was my job. I knew they were wrong, and I did them anyways. The reason I left is, it got to a point where, the person I was, I couldn’t stand that person, and that was stronger than the love I felt for him.”

Making sure to telegraph his movements, Hardison puts an arm over his shoulders, and he lets himself lean into the touch.

“I wasn’t conflicted about him. I meant what I said to Parker. If it’s important for you to know what I did, I’ll tell you, but I really hope it isn’t. More than this, though, I wanted to keep you all safe. The best thing would have been to find and kill him before the rest of you ever came into contact with him, but everything I tried ran into the problem of I couldn’t successfully lie or hide what I was about to do.”

He can’t stop his body from sagging.

“Okay,” Hardison says.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” Hardison’s hand tangles up in his hair. “I’m not mad anymore. Obviously, you were in a very rough position.”

“Does that mean we’re good?”

“Yeah. But it doesn’t really change anything.”

He moves away. “It not changing anything between us is fair, but the others love you, Hardison. You don’t get to just walk away.”

“We’re all walking away,” Hardison responds. “You know, I’ve realised, I don’t know what any of you want. The basics, yeah. Sophie wants to steal stuff and be an actress. Nate is on a damn crusade. They want each other. Parker wants to steal stuff and do frankly scary-ass stunts off really tall places. You want to cook and punch bad guys.”

“And me, I want to hack things and help people, but past that, it’s time for me to find some less complicated people. Almost four years, almost half a decade, I’ve been thinking, if I was patient and open, I could figure out some more stuff and make you all happy, and this- this is the limit, man. You could only give so much, and so can I. I hope you believe me when I say that I hope you and the others find real happiness someday. I’ll always want that for y’all.”

Grabbing his heart, he walks out.

…

He’s tempted to go to Sophie.

After she got attempting to murder him out of her system and after she possibly told Nate and Nate got attempting to murder him out of his system, she might have some helpful advice.

Or she might tell him this is all his fault, and unfortunately, them losing Hardison is probably what’s best for Hardison.

“Hey, Hardison,” Parker pops upside down from the ceiling, “can I sleep with you and Eliot again?”

Of course, she had to ask this right as Nate and Sophie were coming into the door.

“Well, I can’t speak for Eliot, but I told you, girl, anytime you want to come over, bed’s big enough for both of us.”

He punches Hardison’s arm, and Hardison is about to protest, but then, seeing the two, Hardison sighs. “If your minds are in the gutter, get them out. When Eliot came back with that gunshot wound, no way in hell was I getting up every hour to trudge down to the couch to check on him. I got us in my bed, and we were watching TV when Parker showed up, and it turned out, the bed’s big enough for all three of us.”

“Eliot,” Parker pokes him, “can I sleep with you and Hardison again?”

…

He ends up in the middle of the bed. Hardison wraps around him like always, Parker cuddles against him, and the two link fingers.

His heart pulses a calm, steady beat, and he feels a thrum of happiness and sadness alternating through him.

…

It’s time for everyone to scatter.

“Alright, now, I put a tracker in each of your shoes. The rest, you’ll have to find yourself. And just in case you don’t want to wait, here’s a watch. Apple rejected my design, because, they’re damn fools. It can email, stream videos, and tell you how fast you go down. Oh, and it’s water and soda-resistant, but try not to get any bubble bath on it.”

“Thanks, Hardison.” Parker gives him a rather awkward-looking hug, but Hardison’s grinning as if she just handed him the moon.

“Be sure to take that painting with you,” Nate says.

“Absolutely not,” Sophie objects. “It’s staying right here.”

“Sophie-” Nate starts.

The two begin bickering.

“Help me carry it out?” Hardison looks at him, and then, Parker.

“Hey, man, you heard her.”

“Yeah, you heard her,” Parker agrees. “It needs to stay.”

“Fine, I’ll get it my-”

“Parker, did you remember your taser,” Sophie inquires.

Parker produces it, and Hardison stops heading towards the painting.

…

Parker calls them back early, and they all end up squeezed in a hospital room.

“This is Charlie. I tasered a guy who attacked his heart.”

Patting her hand, the old, black man says, “He didn’t have anything to do with my heart seizing, but I appreciate all you’ve done.”

He clearly isn’t comfortable with all these other people in his room, however. Or has any particular objections to Parker’s use of her taser.

For a heart that’s seized without outside influence and belongs to a black man born in the late 20s or early 30s, the heart’s in pretty good shape. It’s smaller than normal but a healthy red with many little scars, one big one, two medium-sized holes, and no blackness.

“Charlie Lawson,” the man introduces himself to Nate.

Noticing Hardison is being unusually quiet, he looks over, and he’s relieved to see Hardison is clearly suffering from allergies rather than actively giving them the silent treatment.

“He stole a painting when he was in the army, but he gave it away and doesn’t know where it is.” Parker gives a disapproving look. “It would be worth millions. We need to protect him from people who want to find it.”

Hardison sneezes up a storm, and Parker hands him tissues.

When they hold hands, he sees how Lawson is looking at them, and he feels a surge of pity. He wonders if the girl Lawson didn’t end up marrying was white or if it was another man.

…

He spends the day dealing with old acquaintances, and when he gets back, Parker is curled up against Lawson in bed, and they’re quietly talking about some Wheel of Fortune rerun playing.

Red-eyed, nose-enlarged Hardison is drinking orange soda.

“Dammit, Hardison, what’s a hospital even doing selling that?” Taking it away, he pours it down the sink. “Especially to someone who looks like you? Here, drink this.” Ignoring Hardison’s squawking, he pushes the thermos of tea-infused soup over.

“Hey, people suffering from allergies are allowed to buy sodas. Which I did.” Sniffing the soup, Hardison recoils.

“It tastes much better than it smells. And you still haven’t paid me back that eighteen dollars you used-”

“You still haven’t proven I stole that.”

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t. Drink. It’ll help.”

He sits down.

“Eliot wants us to eat ‘‘healthy’’.”

“Stop making air quotes, Parker. One, it doesn’t make sense, and two, yes! Dried foods and chocolate are not nutritionally-balanced, and even accepting genetics are weird, it still doesn’t make sense that someone who lives on orange soda is so tall.”

“You still sore over-” Hardison starts.

“I’m not sore.”

He might be a little sore, but he figures the fact he’ll privately admit this- If Hardison hadn’t gotten the spice rank down, his sick ass probably would have fallen off a chair trying to get some galangal.

But Hardison didn’t have the right to track him down, break into his apartment, and more-or-less wrap him in a blanket on the couch in the first place.

“Except, you don’t let Hardison live on hot pockets and soda or me on cereal and fortune cookies and chocolate.” To Lawson, she says, “He wasn’t as bossy at first, but then, he had us eating oatmeal with chocolate chips and toast with honey and strawberries and eating lunch and dinner with all these different things.”

He can’t help himself. “Different things meaning meat and vegetables and fruits along with dairy and grains? In other words, properly balanced meals?”

“Some people don’t eat meat,” she says. “Are their meals not balanced?”

“They can be. I’ve made vegetarian and vegan meals before. It was a fun challenge.”

“Huh, I do feel a little better.”

Looking over, he’s glad to see Hardison looks better, too.

“I can’t imagine why. You don’t drink soda when you’re sick, Hardison! Okay, the only exception is certain caffeine-free sodas when dealing with nausea or with low blood levels. And seriously, why in the hell is a hospital selling sodas?”

“Technically, a machine is selling the sodas.”

“They shouldn’t have soda machines in a hospital. Alright, and the snack machines should have a higher ratio of healthier snacks than the preserved-to-hell junk foods it does.”

“I thought food preservatives weren’t as bad as people thought,” Parker says.

“Why do I run with you people? Some food preservatives are good. Some are neutral. And some are detrimental to the long-term health effects of people.”

Coming over, Parker pats his head. “Eliot, do you want to stop hospitals from selling sodas after we’re done protecting Charlie?”

He considers this.

“Nah. Regular people have the right to make their own choices.” Seeing Hardison open his mouth, he adds, “Don’t. You’re not regular people.”

“Sounds to me like you run with these four, because, you want to make sure they have the best,” Lawson comments.

“Man, he threw my soda that I paid two dollars for away.”

“You paid two bucks? On second thought, Parker, we’re gonna be looking into who exactly is getting the money for soda and junk food being sold in hospitals, and we might be doing something about it.”

Nate and Sophie come in, and they have decent, if extremely overpriced, food for everyone.

Lawson tells them about France and Europe and the time he took over a train when the conductor died on the job.

 _You’ve got a wandering soul_ , he thinks, and he’s glad Lawson has managed to carve out a large chunk of his life adventuring without metaphorically soiling his hands or literally tainting his heart, but at the same time- Lawson was cheated. He doesn’t know the details for sure, but he’s gathered there was a girl, probably a pretty little blonde like Parker, and in another life where beautiful black skin isn’t considered a mark of inferiority by so many, she likely would have held Lawson’s heart in her chest.

During all this, Parker is practically sitting in Hardison’s lap, and Hardison’s heart is beating out a purring rhythm.

He sees Nate realise something. “Eliot, come with me.”

“It’s probably better for me to stay here. Take Hardison and Parker. Your taser charged up?”

She shows it is.

“This time of night, the air will be good for Hardison.”

“I think I’ll go, too,” Sophie says.

Parker pulls him out into the hallway. “You have things about killing people.”

Nodding, he promises, “Parker, if I have to kill people to protect him, I promise you, I’ll protect him.”

She awkwardly pats his shoulder in thanks.

…

Starting to clean the room, he says, “They’ve been doing this dance for almost five years now. Want to bet tonight’s the night they finally stop?”

Lawson chuckles. “Which ones? Parker and her young man, or Mr Ford and Miss Devereaux?”

“Actually, the dance has mostly stopped for Nate and Sophie, but they aren’t quite ready to admit that yet. To themselves or us.”

“He doesn’t like hospitals.”

“No.” Coming over, he sits down. “Eight-years-old. Cancer. He watched his baby boy die. His name was Sam.”

Lawson gives a heavy sigh. “I’ve never had any kids. Sometimes, I regret that deeply, but sometimes, I’m glad. The thought always scared me back when I was younger. What about you?”

“Probably not. If a baby ever happens and I know about it, I’ll insist on being part of its life. Try to be there for the mom.”

“You ever come close to settling?”

“Once. But the kid who made that promise never came back. Never will.”

Lawson nods. “I saw plenty of that back in the day.”

“I promise, though, for as long as I’m around, I’ll look out for Parker.” Thinking about this, he adds, “And Hardison. He needs more looking out for than she does most of the time.”

“I noticed that. It’s, uh, all a little fuzzy, but I could’ve sworn she just up and dropped down fifteen feet when I fell.”

“That probably happened,” he says.

“But she didn’t seem to have a harness or anything.”

“A fifteen foot drop is nothing to Parker. Being a big Spider-Man geek, the start of Hardison falling in love was the first time she dropped down into a restaurant seat across from him from the ceiling or who knows what nearby vent.”

“She’s told me a little about what you all do. Even with you being a band of Robin Hoods, it seems to me, upon realising the man who once stole a painting doesn’t know where it is, you’d leave him to fend for himself.”

“Well, unfortunately, that’s not our policy.”

Something flashes across Lawson’s face.

“Do I remind you of someone?”

He abruptly realises: Maybe pouring Hardison’s soda down the sink while making it clear it shouldn’t have been sold to someone who looks like him in the first place- there are ways that could, given the society they live in, not unreasonably be interpreted.

Lawson likely wishes he had gone with Nate.

“No.” Lawson shakes his head. “I had an acquaintance back in the day, and you have a physical resemblance to him, though, I can’t imagine he’d ever have hair like yours,” and he shares a chuckle with Lawson, “but you aren’t like him in any other way I can see.”

“I take it that’s a good thing,” he says.

“He loved his country, same as me, but he had no problems with all the people who said it wasn’t really mine, too, that I didn’t have or deserve the same rights he did. He didn’t hate me, but he would have been happier if I’d never been part of his unit. If he’d known about the woman I loved- well, it’s a good thing he didn’t.”

“How’d you keep your heart from breaking? Living in a time when you had to deal with so many people like that almost all the time? Losing the love of your life?”

“In some ways, I was an optimist. A dreamer. Many people can learn to suffer a lot if they’re able to focus on the good in their life. And sometimes, just because a person knows they deserve better, they don’t necessarily truly know what is. I imagine Hardison would’ve had an easier time if you were in his life when you were both younger, but he-”

“No,” he can’t help but interrupt. “It’s a good thing we didn’t know each other as kids. For all he sometimes has no common sense, put it like this: I can hardly use Photoshop, and he could hack the world’s nukes if he wanted to. I would have said something, he would have had all my grades changed and somehow revealed it was me who wrote Lee Marie a valentine, and then, I would have punched him. Several times. And then, he would have probably built a robot to destroy me.”

After a moment, Lawson asks, “What’s Photoshop?”

“It’s- There’s these computer programs that can manipulate photographs. Photoshop is the most advanced brand out there. It can also be used in video editing.”

“Can you use it to colorise photos?”

“Me, no, but yeah, it can be used for that.”

“Never really got around to learning much about computers in all these years.”

“There’s still time,” he says.

Shrugging, Lawson gives him an affectionate look. “I’m glad all of Parker’s friends are as interesting as she is.”

…

The others come back with the Van Gogh painting, and the next morning, Nate promises to see it donated.

“Here, I’m giving you one similar to what I gave my Nana.” Hardison hands over a laptop and cellphone. “The first thing you always wanna do when there’s a problem is try turning it off, and then, back on. And if you have any rice and accidentally drop the phone in liquid, the rice might be able to save it.”

At the look Lawson gives the room, Parker assures him Hardison isn’t lying, insane, or simply mistaken.

He and Hardison share their handshake, and he feels his heart beating in tentative hope.

…

When they get back from the hospital, he asks, “Are we good?”

Hardison nods, and the heart pinned to his wrist shows no change. “Yeah, we’re good, Eliot. I tried going solo full time, and it turns out, I’m around until there’s no more Leverage and Associates.”

Unable to help it, he breathes out a sigh. “Look, man, about-”

“Hey.” Hardison catches his eyes. “It’s done. You’re still the best hitter I’ve ever met.”

Hardison doesn’t say it, but he _hears_ : I’ve adjusted my expectations. I’ll trust you to get the job done.

What Hardison won’t necessarily trust him with anymore is Hardison’s life. The lives of Parker, Sophie, and Nate.

He doesn’t know how to get that back.

…

They end up resuming having sex.

There’s a definite time limit now. If Hardison and Parker aren’t together by the start of next year, he’ll have figured out a way to keep her trapped in a room he’s locked Hardison in by then.

As Hardison would say, ‘It’s an oldie but goodie.’

“I broke into Sophie’s place, and she and Nate are definitely having sex,” Parker announces.

Taking in her traumatised look, he adds some more chocolate chips to her oatmeal.

Hardison frowns. “Why are they keeping it a secret? I don’t like it when we keep secrets.”

Vivid images of last night flash through his head.

“Sex is supposed to be private. Isn’t it? That’s what-”

“I don’t mean the sex. Trust me, I do not want any details about what nasty they are and aren’t doing. As far as my imagination is concerned, any bed they use is just for sleeping. I mean them being together.”

“Maybe it’s just sex,” Parker suggests with an uncertain look on her face.

“It’s not.” He sets their food down. “They didn’t know you’d broken in?”

“Nope. Sophie doesn’t have Hardison’s security system.”

It’s occurred to him: Parker could easily get around said security system.

He’s considered- he should probably bring this up to Hardison.

“Do I want to ask-” Hardison starts.

“No, you don’t,” she answers.

“Alright, cool, thanks for telling me.” Hardison shoves a bite of pancake into his mouth. “Or not telling me. Whatever.”

“So, we keep pretending not to know,” Parker asks.

“Good with me,” he says.

“And me,” Hardison agrees.

…

“Hey, uh, sorry we’re late,” Nate says. “We- I-”

“Nate had car trouble last night, and we got the car to my place. He slept on the sofa,” Sophie breezily cuts in.

“Yes! Uh, that’s- what happened.”

Oh, God, I have to do something, he thinks.

Watching them sitting together on the couch, watching Sophie’s heart beat happily when she splits a scone with Nate, seeing the smile on Nate’s face when their fingers touch, however, he thinks, maybe, he doesn’t. Maybe, they’ll figure it out on their own soon.

…

“I had one drink!”

“During a job. We agreed-”

“Who’s we? You don’t get to…”

Parker disappears up into a vent, and grabbing Hardison’s wrist, he leads them out.

“Man, who’s side should I even be on here? Nate’s drinking has gotten a lot better, but at the same time, I don’t blame her for worrying it could get bad again.”

“It’s not about the drink.”

“Maybe, all I know, is the older I get, the more I’m starting to think it’s probably a good thing I never ended up- Why are we pretending not to know? We shouldn’t have to leave Nate’s place, where I was planning on watching his TV, just because he and Sophie can’t be functioning adults about sex and romance!”

“You have your own TVs.”

“And no one to be around while I watch any of them.”

“I’ll watch the game with you.”

“I have that recording. I’m watching this new-”

“Whatever it is, I’ll watch it with you. Not like I have anything else better to do.”

Surprisingly, Hardison frowns. “Hey, you okay? I mean, did something happen with that pretty little lay teacher who you let-”

“That was casual. Her ex-boyfriend got his head out of his ass, and they’re giving it another go.”

He wishes he’d stop feeling guilt over- It’s not exactly a lie. She’d been fun but- not what he wanted. Who. She’d been kind, and he doesn’t know how or why he keeps hooking up with people who are so damn kind over it.

After goodbyes, he’d found the ex-boyfriend, bought him a drink, and talked some sense into him.

“Besides, Hardison, we just stopped yet another terrorist on a plane and broke up another black market organ scheme. I’m tired, man.”

Hardison gives him a sympathetic look. “Yeah, me too.”

Going inside, he kicks off his shoes, and taking his heart out of his chest, he sits down on the couch.

Coming over with a beer and orange soda, Hardison sits next to him. “Maybe, we could lure Parker over, and we could all sleep together.”

He almost points out how dumb and weird and just no that idea is, but instead, he finds himself saying, “If she’s in the building, we could try flooding the vents with the smell of popcorn.”

“Let’s try to catch a Parker,” Hardison excitedly asks.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s try to catch a Parker.”

…

If there’s any chance at all at truly regaining Hardison’s trust, making an agreement with him and Parker, and then, going against the agreement is a sure-fire way to lose that chance, but-

He sends texts to the others. “Nate, let’s go, man. I’ll explain on the way.”

Accepting the breakfast handed to him, Nate blearily says, “I guess I’ll get changed.”

In the car, Nate asks, “What the hell is going on, Eliot?”

“There’s something I need to show you. Buckle up for the ride.”

“You know, this isn’t you explaining things.”

“It’ll be clear when we get there.”

…

When they get to the place, Nate doesn’t unbuckle his seatbelt. “Eliot, what’s going on?”

It hits him what Nate might be thinking. “What? You think I’m going to kill you?” He gets out. “Trust me, if I were, it wouldn’t be this way. I know this is weird, but I’m gonna ask you to trust me here.”

Sighing, Nate gets out. “What the hell.” Following, he adds, “You don’t seem offended that the thought crossed my mind.”

“I’ve thought about killing all of you. That’s who I am, and I’m not going to do anything to physically hurt you, but what I’m about to do might lose me the others. Here.”

He reveals the painting.

“Huh. Is this…” Nate begins examining it. “I think I remember hearing something about it going missing. It must be about… I should call Sophie. Unless, of course, this was one of hers, but from what I remember…”

Eventually, Nate looks at him. “What’s this about, Eliot?”

“You might want to talk to her in person instead. Sophie. She stole this, but unfortunately, she was three days too late.”

“Too late?”

Staying quiet, he watches Nate’s brain work.

“Sam.” Nate clutches his chest with a gasp.

“Yeah.”

Falling to the ground, Nate takes his heart out.

Bracing himself, he comes over, and kneeling, he says, “I am sorry this hurts. I’m sorry it’ll likely hurt her, too. But, Nate, this has gone on long enough. As hard as it is to know who she really is and what she really wants, as hard as it is trying to get your own feelings straightened out, here’s a fact: She wanted your boy to live. And if God had given her three more days, she might have been able to give you that. Given Sam the life he deserved with you and Maggie. This was her best.”

Wiping at his tears, Nate stares into space.

He waits.

When Nate reaches out, he helps him up.

“I don’t know how to feel. Especially about you.”

“That’s fair. You feeling okay enough for me to be your ride back?”

“Yeah.”

…

Hardison and Parker don’t ask questions, but he can tell they’re curious.

The next day, Sophie storms into Hardison’s apartment, and getting up, he moves away from the couch.

“How dare you!”

Catching Hardison’s eye, he shakes his head, and Hardison reluctantly holds Parker back.

“Bloody, soulless, wanker, believe you me, it’s a good thing there aren’t any weapons or very sharp knives around, and I hope to hell you don’t think refusing to fight back makes you look good or some bloody too-cool for everything macho man, I will personally rip you heart out of your chest-”

“Sophie,” Nate’s voice says from the doorway.

She glares him straight in the eye, and it’s more of a fight than he’d like it to be not to look away. “Careful.” She glances over at Hardison and Parker. “You think I don’t know things, things you don’t even know yourself? You’re in no position, the very last person, who had any right to do something like this.”

Storming out, she avoids Nate’s hands.

“I’m okay.” Wiping the blood near his mouth away, he accepts the wrapped icepack Hardison hands him. “So, uh- I interfered in Nate and Sophie’s relationship.”

Parker produces her taser.

…

On a park bench, Sophie sits beside him. “I’m much calmer now. More composed.”

“Maybe. Things need to change. You know Hardison and I’ve been sleeping together. So what? Sophie, sweetie, you’re in love. You’re sleeping with the man you’re in love with. And if you honestly don’t know that he’s in love with you, too, then, here’s me telling you: Nate’s in love with you.”

He sees her get angry, and then, he sees her deflate. “Why did you do this?”

“It turns out, I let people see just enough of the truly bad parts of me that they either leave or don’t stop me when I do. A failed one-night stand helped me figure that out. I’ve been having a lot of those lately. Anyway, even if Parker weren’t in play, we both know I’m never going to stick around for someone like Hardison. He’s too innocent. Not a killer, not naturally prone to violence, too much good, not enough bad.”

“You and Nate aren’t good people. I love you both, but you aren’t. Most of his goodness died when his son did, and you’re only around, because, you love him. It doesn’t matter how many people we all help, some of us are never going to be good. Now, though, you and he are equal.”

“Excuse me?”

“You saw him when he was good, and you’ve seen him at his worst. He might not know the worst thing you’ve ever done, but he’s well-acquainted with the worst aspects of you. And now, he’s seen what your absolute best looks like. It wasn’t mine to show him. I know that, and part of me is sorry.”

“But yeah. That’s why I did it.”

Squeezing his hand, she walks away.

…

Nate and Sophie call them to Nate’s, and when he comes in, Hardison literally traps Parker in his lap.

Sophie looks much happier and less homicidal in Nate’s. “Nate and I are going to Paris to meet Tara and try out our relationship away from the job for a few months.”

“Congratulations. I’m going to meet up an old buddy of mine,” he says.

“I’m going to work on my kill Eliot plan,” Parker announces.

“Parker, babe, we talked about this.”

“My torture Eliot plan.”

“Parker.”

Rolling her eyes, she looks at him. “Eliot, I’m not happy with what you did, but Hardison says I’ll get over it soon. I don’t think I will.”

“That’s fine. Either way, I’ll bring you back some candy or ice-cream.”

She looks at him suspiciously. “Promise.”

“Cross my heart.” He does.

“Alright.” She crawls out of Hardison’s lap. “But if it’s not good, I’ll definitely taser you this time.”

…

They’re called back early.

To Alaska.

The worry and annoyance aren’t strong, though, when he witnesses how lovey-dovey Nate and Sophie are.

Hardison hugs him, but it turns out Hardison is just looking for the nearest heat source he can find.

Parker accepts the zefir. “We should talk later.”

“Sure thing,” he agrees.

They all go into a tent, and Hardison immediately cuddles up to a portable heater.

“Eliot, Parker, will you to be able to work together,” Nate asks.

“Yes,” Parker answers. “I want to go up the mountain, and I know he’s the best person to have with me.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he says.

…

Of course, there’s a problem.

Comms are down, Parker has a torn anterior cruciate ligamentrotator cuff, and they’re underground with a dead man.

Leaving with her isn’t an option, but he’s blanking on how to- if only the comms would work for five minutes. That’d be all Hardison needed.

“We need to get him back up,” Parker says.

“Parker, now isn’t the time to-”

“I don’t want to be like you.”

The statement jolts him out of the urge to scream loudly.

Coming over, he carefully sits down near her. “You’re not. Trust me, you got nothing to worry-”

“I was fine with who I was,” she quietly says. “But then, I learned how good it could be to help people. I suddenly liked working with other people. I liked working with Archie, but it was even better with all of you. I like you, Eliot. I like us being family, or close to it. But one day, you’re going to hurt Hardison, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to ever do that.”

“Look, Parker- me and Hardison-”

“He knows you’re going to leave. We all do. This man-” She gestures to the client’s dead husband. “He didn’t mean to leave his wife. He loved her, and he made promises to her, and she deserves to have him back in anyway that she can.”

“I know that,” he says.

She looks at him. “He might hurt me someday.”

“He’d never intentionally hurt you.”

Shrugging, she pokes at her leg, and he grabs her hand. “No.”

“I’d leave you behind.”

“That’s good, sweetheart. Parker, I promise you, that doesn’t say anything bad about you. I’d tell you to.”

“Yeah, but what if it was him or one of them? Sophie or Nate?”

He doesn’t know how to answer.

“I think I’m more like you than I want to be.”

“Maybe, but- it’s good it’s you and me. We’re not the same, I promise you that, but we are different from them. Them, they’d- They’d probably die down here. But you and me, we ain’t dying. Not here, not now. I’ve hurt more people than can be counted. I’ve put myself first so many different times.”

“But every day I wake up able to walk and talk and think, that’s a day I have a choice: Keep hurting people, or try to do something good with however much time I have left. You can either get into a spiral going over who you used to be and how much worse you could be, or you can choose to use the things you can do to do good. To be good.”

“Blessing or curse, it’s up to you,” he finishes.

She takes her heart out of her chest. “Don’t argue. You need to take this and get to Hardison. Lead them back to me.”

“I’m not-”

“Eliot. We both know you can’t carry or drag me all that way in this weather. And that’s assuming you can get us both up safely. Even if you can, his body might be lost forever. I know that isn’t important, not when it comes to the other things, but I’m trusting you to get the others to help. If I’m wrong-” She takes a shuddery breath. “I’m going to die trying to do the right thing. Trust your team. Hardison’s always trusted you. You didn’t let him die in that pool.”

Then, she throws the heart at him.

“Parker-”

Her eyes are challenging. “You’re wasting daylight.”

“Okay.” Slipping the heart into his pocket, he goes over to her, and taking his out of his chest, he wraps her hands around it. “Don’t argue. Not coming back isn’t an option.”

…

He has to put her heart in his chest, and he’s done this before, but only once.

It’d been with Aimee, and he’d largely forgotten.

Her heart doesn’t reject being in his chest, but he can feel her even as he’s trudging farther away. Brief thoughts and memories and feelings not his own flash through him.

He tries to keep his mind clear. He knows there’s a possibility she’ll be experiencing the same even without his heart in her chest.

She might have never done this before, and if she hasn’t- it should have been Hardison. Or at least, it should have been someone else she fell in love with.

Aimee’s the only person who’s ever gave him her virginity, and he swore long ago, he’d never take anyone else’s virginity or be the first person they exchanged hearts with. The fact this isn’t a true exchange doesn’t matter.

He never meant to take this from Hardison. From her. From some other future hypothetical person.

Making it back, Hardison’s the first person he sees, and shoving the heart at him, he says, “Here.”

“This is Parker’s.” Hardison stands stock still.

“Where’s yours,” Sophie demands.

“With her. Torn ACL. I had to leave her to get help. But we should be able to find her again.”

“She’s still alive,” Hardison mutters.

…

They find Parker, and the dead man’s business partner is arrested for his murder. They bring back as much of the husband as anyone can to the wife.

After he and Parker finally get out of the damn hospital, they find themselves more-or-less confined to Hardison’s apartment, and they all end up sleeping in Hardison’s bed most nights.

When he’s finally cleared to leave, he contacts Vance.

Before he goes, though, he talks to them separately.

“Dude, there’s such a thing as too much slow-playing. I’m not saying force anything, but maybe be a little more assertive. Make it clear you’re still interested, see if there’s anything more she’s comfortable giving right now.”

“Parker, that conversation we had about being good? Well, the same thing applies to being afraid. If things don’t work out with Hardison, that’ll suck, but if you don’t try, that might hurt more. He’s never going to force you to do anything. He just wants all you’re comfortable giving him, and we both know some part of you wants to give more. I’m not necessarily talking about sex. Just you and him being more together. Uh, just remember, short of it being an emergency, you and he get together, and you using your taser on him becomes a big fat no, never.”

…

When he and Vance finish their mission, he’s directed to Portland.

Thoughts of killing Hardison flood through him at the _way_ he’s directed, but he just literally saved the world. And his nephew was in the forefront of his mind like always, but so were Hardison, Parker, Sophie, and Nate.

Maybe, he decides, I should try therapy again. For more than one session.

On top of a microbrewery, Hardison lays out: They can’t go back to Boston. Someone managed to burn all their identities. Hardison isn’t sure who or how yet.

“Hardison and I are dating,” Parker adds.

More important than possibly therapy: Make a cake. Call Vance to take him up on his offer of joining that specialised taskforce being put together. Figure out how to gently make it clear to the others-

“I bought the microbrewery,” Hardison says.

Dammit, Hardison, why would you do this, he wonders. Hardison might be the biggest genius around, but he knows nothing- Hardison may get tired of this eventually, but until then, he can’t let Hardison’s restaurant fail. He should probably call Toby.

“This is the dumbest idea you've ever come up with.” He starts to explain why.

“That’s what you’re upset about,” Sophie demands.

It sucks their other identities have all been burned, but the loss of Nate’s place isn’t something he would have thought any of them, including her, would be sentimental over. Hardison deciding to make such a big life change without telling him, though- If Hardison really wanted this as opposed to it being some whim (it’s probably a whim, he acknowledges), Hardison should have contacted him before doing it.

He shouldn’t have to rearrange his life to make such a big commitment with so little warning.

…

After Sophie drags Parker away and Nate goes to do something, he braces himself before hugging Hardison. “Congratulations, man.”

Nodding, Hardison studies him. “We cool?”

“I’m happy for you. And Parker. You two are gonna be great together,” he says. “But seriously, man, a freaking brewpup? C’mon, I’ve told you how hard the menu is to design for those!”

Hardison shrugs. “Might make it easier to keep control of Nate’s drinking. Besides, have you seen the vents in this place? ‘Cause, I have. And I’m definitely in Parker’s book of best boyfriend she’s ever had so far.”

“You’re the only boyfriend she’s ever had.”

“She could decide she wanted another one someday. I don’t discount that possibility.”

“Yeah, in all seriousness: I doubt that will ever happen. So, uh, please, tell me you have some actual plans for how to run this place.”

“Well, first off, I want to go green.”

“By that-”

“I mean solar power and the like. Don’t worry, I like the actual colour scheme just fine. Next week, I’m looking into contractors, handymen or women, handypeople? All that.”

“What? No. You’re not wasting money on that.”

“Well, I sure as hell ain’t trying to install a tank-less water heater and low-flow faucets and solar panels myself. I mean, maybe, Parker would want to do the solar panels. Uh, I guess she might be able to, too. But anyway, what do you got against me going-”

“Do whatever you want. I don’t care if you go green or not.”

He’ll figure out how to make it clear later that, the only way he’s not going to be doing repairs, is if he’s physically incapable. Parker might be allowed to help some, but this is going to depend on a lot of things.

…

“Cake!” Parker exclaims.

Winking at Sophie, he sets it down.

“Damn, Eliot, what’s this for, man,” Hardison asks.

“For-” You and Parker. “New beginnings. For all of us.” Pouring some champagne for Sophie, he hands Nate a glass of soft cider, and raising his beer, he toasts them.

“To new beginnings,” they all echo.

Of course, Parker holds up a slice of cake, and Hardison holds up a glass of the disgusting beer he tried to brew.

…

“Parker, I’m trying to work.”

Lifting herself onto the counter (he’ll have to have that sanitised _again)_ , she says, “Even though Hardison and I are dating, you could still sleep with us sometimes.”

There’s someone around.

He knows this.

Even though he can’t hear, smell, or even sense anyone, he knows, for a fact, a waiter or waitress or maybe that little roly-poly kid Hardison is tutoring on how to properly hack alphabet agencies is within hearing distance, and this person or people heard Parker clear as a bell.

The brewpup staff has a betting pool, and some regular customers have joined in. Until now, Parker and Hardison dating and him just being the asshole chef who does mysterious work with them outside of the restaurant hasn’t been cause for any speculation.

“Parker, us occasionally falling asleep watching TV was something that happened when none of us were dating anyone.”

Honestly, he’s not sure if saying this will help or make things worse, but-

“Yo, Eliot, is Sophie around? We got a sort of customer who’s ordered nothing but water. Says she’s waiting for someone, which would be fine, but I get the feeling she might be a potential client.”

Coming over to look, he answers, “No, I think she and Nate-”

His heart twists so painfully in his chest.

Pulling Hardison back, he orders, “Stay in the kitchen. Keep Parker there.”

He goes out, and when she spots him, she stands. Her outfit is conservative enough for a business meeting but revealing enough to show she’s unarmed. None of the people around show signs of being with her.

Walking over, he motions for her to sit, and when she does, he follows suit. “Mrs Moreau.”

“Mister Spencer,” she greets, and her English has gotten better. “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

“Why are you here?”

“To ask you: Do you think I’m a good mother?”

Out of everything, he wasn’t expecting this.

He knows, if something had happened to either of her daughters, she wouldn’t be here.

“I don’t know enough to answer that,” is all he can say.

Some of Damien’s employees called her an Ice Queen.

She married Damien knowing full well who he was. She had his children. She lives off of blood money, and there’s a chance one or both of them could join, or rather, restart the family business one day.

However, he’s never agreed with the label of Ice Queen. Her heart does thrive in colder weather, but it’s a soft, easily bruised thing with no blackness or holes and a lot of childhood scars. Despite not connecting well with people, appearances are something she finds easy to control. Shyness or simple anxiety, he’s not sure, but he’s rarely observed outright disdain towards anyone.

Including him.

He doesn’t know how long she knew about him and Damien before she walked in, but when she did, she’d rolled her eyes before walking back out. Damien had told him later she’d made a fuss about always remembering to lock the door when any of the children were around. Apparently, Damien pointing out he hadn’t known she was bringing the children over wasn’t good enough; he was to always assume they could just pop up, and thus, always be careful to lock the door.

She’d never treated him any differently after that, though, he was aware, if she’d had any of the kids with her when she opened the door, she likely would have.

He starts to say he doesn’t think she’s a bad mom, to explain he just doesn’t really know much about her parenting style, but she nods. “Thank you for your time, Mister Spencer.”

She leaves, and he forgot how quickly she can move.

Following, he’s grateful for bickering Sophie and Nate coming in. She starts to move past them, but Sophie gently shoves at Nate, and he ends up bumping into her.

Starting to apologise in her native language, Mrs Moreau shakes her head. “Sorry. I apologise,” she says in English, and he sees the second she recognises Nate.

He knew she’d find out what, who, resulted in her husband (ex-husband?) ending up in a San Lorenzo prison, but he’d been hoping, for the sake of her children-

“It was my fault,” Nate says, though, the look he shoots Sophie suggests he almost said ‘our’ instead. “Are you okay?”

“Thank you.” Giving a soft smile, she pats Nate’s hand. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr Ford.”

His blood runs cold at her next words. Roughly translated, it means: I’ve been through the same.

He grabs her arm. “Where’s Mihail?”

She’s terrified, but it’d take effort to see this.

“In Romania with his uncle. Please, let me go, Mister Spencer. My innocent daughters are waiting for me.”

“Eliot,” Sophie softly says.

“Is he sick?”

“No.”

Letting go of her, he takes a deep breath. “But he is why you came. Please- just tell me what’s going on?”

“Andrei was granted custody of Mihail, and I’ve been forbidden to set foot in Romania.”

Asking why in the hell she didn’t start with this- would make things worse.

“Alright. We’ll help you. Let’s go upstairs.”

He’s surprised at the anger flashing through her eyes. “You thought I’d hurt him. My son. It was one thing for the courts to take lack of blood in accountance, but- well, I don’t control how you think things.”

“Look at me,” he orders.

She does.

“I never thought that, Mrs Moreau. I promise you that. I was worried someone had hurt him, because of Damien, or that he’d gotten sick. You know I’ve never wanted anything bad to happen to him or his sisters. Now, please.” He makes sure the touch on her arm is gentle this time. “We can probably help you. Please, let us.”

…

Upstairs, he puts a photo up. “Damien Michaelangelo Moreau, called Mihail, is the biological son of Damien and Theresa Moreau.”

Mrs Moreau crosses herself.

“Damien married Mrs Moreau here-”

“Jasna,” she says.

“When Mihail was six months old. Now, one of Damien’s older cousins, a Romanian count, has gained custody.”

“Was there an adoption,” Nate asks. “Did you formally adopt him?”

She shakes her head. “I never thought it necessary, and Damien never said anything. Mihail went to English boarding school when he was nine, but it was his choice. He loves swimming, and aside from climate being much better for it, they have some of the best tournaments for those his age there. Whenever he come home- home was wherever I and the girls were. He calls me Mama still or,” she carefully pronounces, “‘Mum’ around his English friends. He knows about Theresa, but I’ve always been his mother, too.”

“How did this count get Mihail into Romania,” Sophie asks.

“That,” Mrs Moreau quietly says, “was my fault. He wanted Mihail to visit. Mihail didn’t want to, but I said it’d only be for a week. Before or as soon as the plane landed, Andrei had my passport there revoked, and he had an- emergency custody hearing? I’m not sure. But my lawyers say what he’s done has legal standing.”

“I hate to bring up the elephant in the room,” Hardison says, and he resists doing a face-palm when she looks around the room, “but what about Moreau? Damien Moreau senior, who we put in a San Lorenzo prison.”

Mrs Moreau raises her hand, and Parker says, “You don’t need to do that. It took me a long time to stop, but you don’t need to.”

“When I married my husband, I made a vow I would be a good mother to his son and any children we had together. That was the only vow I made. If this makes me a bad wife, then, that’s what I am. Damien can sort his own business out. I just want my son back. Andrei wants him to be like Damien in more ways. Mihail loves swimming, he has a good memory, and he’s irrational about this football team.”

“Soccer,” he corrects.

She rolls her eyes. “You encouraged them. I never appreciated that. But things are he has in common with Damien. He doesn’t need to know about money accounting and handling certain weapons right now. He likes archery, but I pray his only aim will ever be those painted round things.”

There’s a knock on the door, and opening it, he sees a waitress has brought up the gazpacho and white tea he ordered. “Thank you.”

Setting the tray over Mrs Moreau’s lap, he says, “Hey, Hardison, grab a spoon and taste this.”

Starting to get a spoon, Hardison asks, “It’s not gonna bite me, is it? It doesn’t have peanuts, right?”

“Yes, Hardison, I put peanuts in gazpacho. Because, convincing her it’s not poisoned should be done by triggering an allergic reaction!”

Shrugging, Hardison takes a small bite. “Too much vegetables.”

“Dammit, Hardison, don’t-”

She tugs on his sleeve. “Thank you.” Taking a bite, she comments, “You’ve gotten better.”

He tries not to wince when Parker pops the spoon Hardison used into her mouth.

Kissing is part of what they do, he knows this, but- still.

…

He feels like he should talk to Hardison, but Hardison is with Parker, and if there’s a question of loyalty from the team, then, he’ll need to talk to all of them about that.

 _I don’t think I have feelings- Damien doesn’t cross my mind much anymore_ , is what he might say if Hardison and Parker weren’t together.

What he said about his and Damien’s sexual relationship was true. Damien never hurt him or forced anything.

One time, he was on a mission, and he was tempted by someone else. He didn’t end up giving in, but Damien had known he was tempted.

Damien had been actively dominant that night, and by morning, he’d admitted to himself and Damien that he was Damien’s. It’d been a good feeling, a feeling of relief at no longer fighting it, a feeling of joy that, as much as he could, he held a part of Damien, too.

Over the years, the feeling had turned to shame, but now- he’s just not Damien’s anymore. He doesn’t miss him. He doesn’t miss his touch. And the shame is largely gone, too.

He knows what he became, he knows part of that can never be undone, but until Damien becomes a threat again (he knows Damien almost certainly will), he doesn’t star much in his head anymore, and when he does, his heart is usually steady and pain-free.

“You good for this?” Hardison sits down beside him. “We’re gonna get that boy back to his mama, but Eliot, man, if you wanna sit this one out-”

“Like hell,” he responds. “I hate Andrei, man. Even before this. He never appreciated my cooking.”

“A damn fool, then,” Hardison says. “You think Mrs Moreau is gonna be okay at the hotel we put her in?”

“Yeah, she’ll be fine. She isn’t playing any role. She knows exactly who Moreau is, but she’s never actively been part of his business. And she’s always looked out for the kids. She’ll do what we tell her in order to get Mihail safely back.”

“He a good kid? Not that it matters, but did you like him back then?”

“Yeah. Uh, he’s- He has a scar on his heart from when he found a bird in a park. He tried to save it, and honestly, I think he might have accidentally killed it, but he cried on-and-off for hours at it dying. He got his ass handed to him once when he attacked some bigger boys who were messing with the older of his baby sisters. He looks a lot like Damien, but- he was a sweet kid. Let the youngest sister put a tiara on him once when she yelled at him for saying only girls wore it.”

“Think Moreau misses his boy?”

He can’t answer.

Damien’s scar came from Theresa dying shortly after delivering Mihail. Like the women Damien travels with, having a son, a wife, and the girls was good for his image.

Andrei, though, cared more about Mihail being Damien’s heir than Damien did. Mrs Moreau said they should send Mihail to the English school Mihail wanted to go to, and after having him check it out, Damien agreed. Damien always sent appropriate presents for all three kids on their birthdays when he couldn’t make it there in person.

He was more interested in Damien’s kids than Damien was, and he’s long accepted he’ll never figure out why. If Damien does have any genuine love for them. If Damien misses them. Misses videos of Henrietta’s violin concerts or the clay figurines Thomasina would have her mother mail to him.

Damien was always careful with them, had them locked up safe, but he never studied them or took pictures. Never displayed them.

Hardison squeezes his hand. “Better get some sleep before we head out. Uh, by the way, I know it might be weird, but since when have any of us ever been normal, man? Parker’s offer, I’m onboard. If you ever wanna sleep with us, you can.”

“Dammit, Hardison, don’t say it like that.”

Rolling his eyes, Hardison says, “Okay, if you ever want to literally sleep in the same bed me and Parker are literally sleeping in at the same time we are, then, just let us know. That was always nice.”

…

In the airport lounge, Mrs Moreau says, “Thank you for getting him back.”

Looking over at where Mihail is showing the rest of the team pictures, he nods.

Mihail looks even more like Damien, and with his voice starting to change, he’s even starting to sound a little like him.

“Just keep him out of Romania until he’s eighteen.”

“I will.” She hesitates. “They’re good people. Especially the Alec man.”

She can’t pronounce ‘Hardison’, and for some reason, she clearly doesn’t believe ‘Alec’ is his real name.

“Yeah, they are. About your husband-” He trails off.

“I told you I don’t care. He can-”

“About me and him. I- Did you-” He tries to find the words.

“I married him, because, I wanted someone who wouldn’t have children that posed a threat to mine. And who would provide for me and them always. It wouldn’t be surprising if I and Theresa were the only women he’s done anything to make babies with, and as long as we’re careful, the wealth you and the others didn’t take should last me and the children for life.”

She smiles softly. “I fell sorry for you, Mister Spencer. Please, don’t take that as an insult. It was not meant to be. I fell sorry, because, you really loved him. More than me his wife did, more than Andrei did, even more than his children in some ways, but that wasn’t their fault at all.”

“I’m glad you’ve chosen better. This Alec man clearly loves you back. Damien never would have thought to buy you a restaurant.”

Her smile fades, and he realises he didn’t control his own expression.

“If I said something-”

“You didn’t. Yeah- Hardison’s great.”

…

Killing Hardison and possibly the others is off the table.

He considers calling Hardison to yell about not lying and conning your team.

He considers calling Parker to yell about not helping people lie and con your team.

He considers calling Nate and Sophie to yell about how you’re supposed to say something when you see members of your team are conning another member.

Packing up, he’s at the edge of Portland when he considers whether he really wants to send a goodbye text or not.

Damien Moreau never would have bought him a restaurant, no, but if Damien had, it would have been, ‘Here’s a restaurant,’ not, ‘I’ve stupidly bought a restaurant for myself, here are my godawful plans for the menu, and I will be paying way too much money to make the place green.’

Mrs Moreau thought he and Hardison were (still) together, and he can see how she could have missed Parker and Hardison being a thing, but the fact she was able to pick up enough on his end to make her come to this conclusion-

He needs to leave. He’s stayed around for too long.

At least, be a man and confront them face-to-face, pops into his head.

He turns around.

…

“Oh, hey, where’d you go,” Nate asks. “We were just about-”

Spotting Hardison working on his laptop with Parker sitting on the counter next to him, he goes over. “Why in the hell did you buy the brewpup for me?”

“That’s our cue to leave,” he hears Sophie say, and behind him, she and Nate do.

Hardison looks shocked. “What?”

Parker, on the other hand, meets him eye-to-eye. “How’d you figure out our Eliot trap so soon?”

“Parker!” Hardison protests.

“What? That’s what it is! Was?”

“Yes, Parker, ‘was’,” he snaps. “Well?”

Hardison sighs. “Okay, the thing is- Ah, hell, I really thought I’d have more time.”

“I don’t care if you sleep with Hardison, and he still wants to sleep with you,” Parker says. “And by sleeping, I mean sex.”

Seeing Hardison’s wince, he’s glad he isn’t the only one.

“That’s not exactly- I had a feeling you were going to leave soon, and you can leave whenever you want. I couldn’t stop you if I wanted to. But I thought, if I gave you a reason, you’d wanna stay a little longer.”

“And also, the sex-”

“Parker, baby, no,” Hardison gently says. “This isn’t about that. The Eliot trap was for both of us, for all of us, not that.”

Her expression makes it clear she finds them to be idiots who need to be tasered.

He leaves.

…

Parker appears over his bed.

The fact he was sleeping- he figures he should know better by now than to expect her to not do things like this.

He makes her a sandwich.

“Hardison doesn’t let me do a lot of things.”

He almost says: That doesn’t sound like Hardison at all.

Instead, he asks, “What do you mean?”

“When it comes to sex things.”

“Dammit, Parker, don’t-”

“I like kissing him and taking showers with him, but some things, I could do them, and it wouldn’t matter. It’d be like me going to robot fights with him. Other things, I don’t like them, but I could still do them. Like when you make me try yucky food.”

“There’s a big difference.”

“That’s what he says. If I liked sex, wanted it, I guess it’s possible I’d feel different. But I never cared that you two were having sex, not once I knew you wouldn’t hurt him. And I wouldn’t care now. It’s been the five of us, but it’s also been the three of us. We have something Nate and Sophie don’t have.”

“I don’t sleep with married people or people in otherwise committed relationships.”

Damien Moreau aside, he can honestly say this.

Whether he wants to or not, sometimes, he can’t help but wonder: Would he have still if Mrs Moreau loved Moreau, if she was hurt by his infidelity?

Finishing the sandwich, she takes his hand. “If you want to leave, I won’t try to stop you. It wouldn’t be good if you were around when you didn’t want to be. But if you leave, you better say goodbye. Properly. You better hug Hardison. You better tell him that he mattered. You better thank Nate and Sophie for all they did.”

“Because, if you don’t, either the world’s best thief takes out Hitter Eliot Spencer, or he takes me out. I’m not afraid. My heart’s been in your chest. I’ve held yours in my hands. You agreed not to hurt Hardison, and that’s one promise you’ll only be able to break once. If you’re lucky.”

He’s heard enough threats to hear the _if you leave, don’t ever come back_ woven in.

These words haven’t hurt him this much since his father said them aloud.

…

He goes to Hardison’s, and Hardison opens the door with money in hand.

Sighing, Hardison breathes out, “Parker.”

“Yeah. I know you didn’t send her.”

“Want to come in and eat the pizza I ordered to try to lure her back?”

He comes in. “A freaking brewpup, man?”

“It worked.”

“And that Christmas you pawned that toy off on me for my nephew?”

“I didn’t pawn anything off. I told you I was going to donate it, and you took it.”

“You claimed you won it on an online raffle, and then, you kept nagging me to drive to the nearest toy drive, because, ‘Oh, Eliot, it’s too damn cold out there.’”

“The ‘winning’ part might be open to interpretation, but it was too damn cold out there. If you weren’t going to take it, I’d have found some other way to get it to the toy drive. But hey, if you thought your nephew would like it, why shouldn’t he get it? He deserves nice toys same as every kid. We all donated more than enough money to the drive.”

Moreau did this, is in his head.

His heart twitches in protest.

He killed, and he did worse for Moreau. First, as an employee, and then, as a lover.

Hardison would have managed to be happy for Parker if she found someone else.

He knows this.

Hardison listens and makes people laugh and is just damn good at keeping people from realising he’s now their friend until they’re comfortable enough to admit it. The part where oh, there two of them go falling in love with him- looking at Hardison, he can’t make himself believe that was part of the con.

Hardison, he knows, just wanted friends, a family beyond his Nana, and when an alcoholic, a grifter, a thief, and a hitter fell into his orbit, he just decided, ‘Yeah, why not? They’ll do.’

In Parker’s case, some part of him could see back then that Hardison was making a good call. In his case-

“I need you to help me find a therapist. That might take some time before the right one is found.”

Blinking, all Hardison says, “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Why don’t we eat the pizza, I doubt Parker’s coming back tonight, and talk some before we make any decisions about something like that?”

“Yeah, okay. What kind did you order?”

…

It shouldn’t work.

Parker and Hardison kiss and do couple things, and he’s happy for them.

He and Hardison have sex, and Parker only fusses when he makes breakfast that has too many unknown fruits.

Some nights, he literally sleeps in between them, and in one instance, the three of them crammed into the shower together.

It shouldn’t work.

Hardison’s heart is still beautiful and healthy, and Parker’s looks nothing like the heart she produced years ago. It’s still largely gray with holes and raised scars, but it’s big and full. Whenever Hardison kisses or plays with it, it audibly thumps, and slowly, the tinge of red is continually spreading.

He finds himself looking at his own heart.

It’s redder. Some of the cracks have disappeared. Some of the scars have thinned.

…

One night, he goes to Hardison’s.

“Hey, Parker’s sleeping,” Hardison greets. “Uh, in her bedroom. She needs her space tonight. But if you just came over to sleep-”

Extending his heart, he says, “I need you to hold this.”

“What? Eliot, are-”

“Hardison, take my damn heart.”

Hardison does, and he makes it to a chair before going down.

Coming over, Hardison keeps it in clear view.

He closes his eyes until he feels- pleasure and pain can be so deeply intertwined. Hardison’s hands are warm, a mixture of soft and calloused that he can feel from where he’s sitting, and as cracks close up, pleasure spikes through when the newly healed areas are stroked.

It hurts outright when the holes and scars are touched, but Hardison tries avoiding them.

He’s breathing too heavily, he’s achingly hard, and some part of him never wants this to stop.

The last crack disappears, and Hardison looks at him with soft eyes. “That enough?”

“Keep it. Sleep sounds good,” he says.

….

He wakes up to the feeling of Parker’s hands on his heart.

“It looks so different,” she says. “Can I put it in my chest? I wanna see how it feels different from Hardison’s.”

Beside him, Hardison is struggling to wake up.

Kissing him, he slips out of bed. “Yeah, sure. Just brace yourself. It might not be pleasant.”

They both breathe out when she does, and after a moment, she says, “It’s basically what I expected. Different from Hardison’s, but I like it.”

Kissing her forehead, he goes to start breakfast.

…

Nate calls a meeting.

“I’ve been- keeping a secret.”

“Do you want to hit him first, or would it hurt more if I tasered him first?”

Before he can answer, Sophie protests, “I’m his girlfriend, I should get first hit.”

“Hardison, get Sophie a fireplace poker. It’s awesome when she uses those.”

“No fireplace pokers or tasers or hitting,” Nate firmly says.

Noticing how quiet Hardison is being, he suddenly has a sinking feeling.

“Don’t blame Hardison,” Nate continues.

“For what,” Parker asks. “It’s not his fault you’ve been playing us again.”

“Um, well,” Hardison says.

“The real reason we’re in Portland is: There’s a black book.” Nate lays it out. All the names of the powerful elite who broke the world’s economy. All the politicians and public figures in their pockets.

Parker’s heart develops a crack, and looking at Hardison, her voice is so small, “You lied to me.”

He notices Hardison’s heart is out of sight.

“I’m sorry,” is the soft response.

“Don’t put this on him,” Nate says. “He kept my secret. We keep each other’s secrets, sometimes. But sometimes, they need to come out. For instance, you three,” he gestures to them, “have something special. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t have involved Hardison once I knew he and Parker were dating. The other part of me thinks I should have been honest with all of you from the beginning.”

“You three could lose each other. It’s a risk. And I’m willing to risk myself, but Sophie, sweetheart, I don’t want you and them taking this risk without a lot of careful thought and consideration. Once we get this book, if we do, everything will change. Personally, I’m thinking of retiring.”

…

He’s had thoughts of someday having his own restaurant.

It’s better, looking after Hardison’s, he’s found. Better than working in one of Toby’s, even.

Unfair, keeps going through his head.

His nephew broke a leg. He met this geeky kid. He met this crazy woman he wouldn’t’ve trusted with anything important. His wallet, his thoughts and feelings, his literal heart, no.

It should have ended there.

He should either be dead or still aimlessly drifting right now.

“ _These people you are with now, would you leave any of them behind? Ever?”_ General Flores had asked.

He’d thought he’d known the answer then, but- Now, he truly knows why he turned around before leaving Portland.

Taking a deep breath, he goes to find Hardison and Parker.

…

They’re sitting in painful silence in Hardison’s apartment.

“Are you leaving,” Parker asks. She glares at Hardison. “If he is, it’s your fault.”

“No. To both. I’m not leaving, and if I were, it wouldn’t be his fault. But I’m not.”

“Sorry, Eliot,” Hardison says.

Sitting down, he puts his heart on the table before taking their hands. “I love you both.” Ignoring the way they both jolt at this, he continues, “The past is done. I just need there to not be anymore big secrets. I haven’t told you, either of you, some of the things I’ve done, but you know I’ve done terrible things. Working for Damien Moreau, him being more than a boss to me, that was my biggest secret. That was what I hid from all of you.”

“But I promise, it’s the only thing. All I’m asking is that, from now on, if something comes up, we don’t try to deal with it on our own or try to involve the others without telling everyone involved what’s really going on.”

“Okay.” Hardison kisses him. “I love you, Eliot.”

Parker nods. “I love you, Eliot.” She kisses him, and it’s nice but probably not something that will happen often.

She takes out her heart, and at her motion, Hardison takes his out.

“Nate said things are going to change,” she says. “That means we will, too. We should do it together. Better or worse, we need to always be there for each other. To try to help and to let each other help when we need it.”

He crosses his heart. “I’m in.”

“Me too.” Hardison crosses his own.

“So am I.” Parker crosses hers.

…

“Parker, I gave you an extra milkshake. Now, stand still!”

“Maybe you should have given her the extra milkshake after you got through measuring her?”

“No, really, I never would have thought of that. Shut up, Hardison!”

At least, Hardison was easy to measure.

“Why are you measuring us? Is it for coffins?”

“Parker, for the love of God-”

“Alright.” Coming over, Hardison stands behind her, and putting a hand against her stomach, he presses her up against him. “Here, mama, stand straight.”

Closing her eyes, Parker smiles a warm, contented smile.

“It isn’t for coffins, is it?”

“Hardison, I will throw all of your orange soda out and make it clear to every place within a hundred miles what will happen if they sell you more.”

“You do remember I know how to use the internet, right? Better than y’all? And that I can control drones?”

“Oh!” Parker jumps. “Remember that time you chased me with drones?”

“Course, I do. I mean, I wasn’t exactly chasing, but my drones wouldn’t have gotten near as much information without you leading them. They love you just about as much as I do.”

He finally gets an accurate measurement of her. “I’m going to my place. I’ll be back for dinner. Stick to the snack bowl if either of you get hungry before then.”

“Why aren’t we allowed at your place anymore? Do you have a secret,” Parker demands.

“There’s a difference between secrets and privacy, Parker. We don’t even know where all of your places around here are.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s true.”

“But to be clear-” Hardison starts.

“No, I’m not making coffins for you two. If you die, Nate and Sophie will have your brain donated to science and all viable organs scheduled for transplant. Parker dies, and they dump her ashes from the highest place they can safely get on.”

Bouncing, Parker asks, “What about you?”

“Remember: Snack bowl if you get hungry.”

…

Nate has them taking even more cases than ever, but finally, there’s four guaranteed days off.

On the second day, he comes over to Hardison’s, and after they’re finished with breakfast, he says, “You two want to come over to my place? I’ve got a surprise.”

“Can I drive?”

“No,” he and Hardison answer.

…

His hands shake when he starts to unlock his door.

This hasn’t happened since he surprised Aimee on her eighteenth birthday.

Feeling Hardison’s hand on his back, he opens the door. “Come in.”

“You sleep in the living room when you’re here,” Parker asks.

“Not exactly.” He can see Hardison has a better idea than Parker does, but unfortunately, he can’t make out how Hardison is feeling.

“I’m not sure Hardison’s bed is the best thing for all of us. I, uh, saw this online, and I thought, if the two of you wanted, we could replace his bed with it. Make it ours.”

“There’s two, technically, three beds,” Hardison neutrally points out.

Years ago, when he’d first seen the bunk bed, if this word even really applies to it, he’d thought it was ridiculous. A double bed with a single on top.

Lately, though, he’s been thinking, a bigger bed really would be nice, but also, Parker sometimes just doesn’t want to sleep in bed with them but might want to sleep in the same room if that was an option.

“There could come a day when all three of us want to be in the same room but none of us want to sleep in the same bed.”

He’d made the bottom bunk a king with the top a double. The other bed is a queen.

Hardison’s room is big enough for them all to comfortably fit, but if they ever move somewhere smaller, it might be a problem.

“You made these,” Hardison asks.

“I’m gifted.”

Laughing, Hardison curls around him.

“I’d say I love them, but are you going to make us help get them in Hardison’s room? And get his old bed out?”

“No, of course not. We have movers. Or we can get movers. I’ll make sandwiches. Just don’t scare them by popping down from the ceiling or out of the vents.”

…

“Why,” Nate pants, “and how did I get roped into this?”

He smacks Nate’s hand away from the sandwich display. “Those are for them.” He gestures to the movers.

“You’ve been forcing me to help them!”

“You’re being punished,” Parker says.

“Yes, thank you, Parker. I got that.”

Coming in with the physical money he (Eliot) insisted be used to tip them, Hardison says, “Don’t worry, my dudes, we don’t typically use manual labour as a punishment. See, we’re all family, and Nate here did something…”

Handing Nate some water as she walks by, Sophie leans against the counter. “You know, normally, a couple will buy a bed together when they get to that step.”

“Right, I’ll just stroll into a mattress store with Parker and Hardison, and while I’m trying to get her out of the vents, I’ll have Hardison camped out on a bed, demanding orange soda and doing I don’t know what to the place’s computer system. And if they didn’t have a computer system, they would within the week, during which, I’d be dealing with Parker all on my own.”

She chuckles. “I suppose whatever type of redecorating works best for all parties of the relationship is more important than what’s typical.”

“Maybe we should have waited, though, to have the beds moved. Once we start on the master bathroom, we might need to camp out somewhere else.”

“The master bathroom?”

“We need a bigger shower. The bathtubs in the other bathrooms are big enough. I can’t do that all myself, but I can help the contractors, make sure they do it all right, and make sure these two don’t get in the way.”

Hardison would really like to take a bath with one of them (or both at once, knowing Hardison), but unfortunately, he picked the wrong people when it comes to that. Parker doesn’t like baths, and aside from also preferring showers, he’s just never understood why any adult would take a bath with someone else unless there was a necessary reason behind it.

Thankfully, Hardison seems happy enough spending hours in the jacuzzi with his bath toys.

Raising an eyebrow, she says, “You’re going to spoil them.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to be the best boyfriend I can be, and maybe, someday, more.”

Kissing his cheek, she strokes the other one. “Legality’s never mattered to any of us, not when it comes to the important things. But if you and them ever do take such a big step, you’ll need to let someone else do the cake. One of the grooms can’t do everything.”

Scoffing, he doesn’t say they’d probably end up doing cupcakes instead. On one of their cons, Parker was reading bridal stuff, and she’d been excited about this couple who served wedding cupcakes. The way Hardison had looked at her when she was talking, Hardison wouldn’t have any objections to forgoing a traditional cake.

…

The three of them stop a terrorist attack without Nate and Sophie.

In the process, he was shot, and now, he has to deal with Hardison and Parker deciding his way of taking care of himself isn’t good enough.

He should have fought harder that night years ago when there was concern about a concussion.

“Trust me, you two don’t want me around when I’m like this.”

Getting him sat down on the shower seat, Hardison double-checks his bandages before motioning for Parker to turn on the water. “Cause, you’ve always been so mild-mannered and pleasant. Never short-tempered and unnecessarily mean. It’s not like you’ve ever insulted everything about us, mostly me, when you weren’t shot.”

“He’s said there’s something wrong with me more times than I can count,” Parker adds.

Looking up at him, Hardison smiles. “Hey, we can take it. Just know, you go too far, and you get chocolate-frosted cereal with extra sugar. Cause, baby, we can and will move all the other food out of here.”

…

After the shower, Parker puts his heart on the night-stand next to hers and Hardison’s. “Here.”

It’s not good how easily she manages to get him to swallow the pills.

“Now, I’m gonna be right up there. If you need the bed to yourself, Hardison will move to the other one, but you’re staying in here tonight.” She kisses his forehead.

Then, after she and Hardison share a kiss, she flips up onto the top bed.

Hardison looks at him, and not bothering to keep his eye-roll in check, he says, “Get down here already.”

Doing so, Hardison carefully wraps around him, and with the combination of pills and Hardison surrounding him, he slips into a relatively painless sleep.

…

It’s time to go after the book.

“Nate, I know Sterling is an important part of your plan, but- be prepared, man. He might have tricks you don’t know about.”

“He knew about the painting,” Nate quietly says. “I know. I- Back when we were friends, I was most like Hardison. He was a lot like me, actually, just with less alcoholism and no Sophie to be in love with.”

“Back then,” Nate continues, “he justified it with the fact, it wouldn’t affect business. If there was any real sentiment mixed in, it’s gone now. He wants me thrown in some secret prison. I won’t let that happen.”

He wishes to God he could believe Nate.

“If it does, you know we’ll be coming for you.”

“Yeah, but,” Nate catches his eyes, “it won’t.

…

They get the black book, and Nate announces he’s done.

Then, he watches Nate propose to Sophie, and she says yes.

“You know, this was your crusade,” he tells Nate. “Now, it’s our war.”

Sophie squeezes his shoulder. “Promise me,” she glances over at Hardison and Parker, “you’ll keep them safe.”

“‘Til my dying day,” he vows.

Nate smiles. “You know, Eliot, I’d say call if you need anything, but you never, ever need anything.”

“Yeah, I did,” easily falls out, and he lets himself look at the two people he might as well call his husband and wife. “And thanks to you, I don’t have to search anymore.”

…

At home, Hardison puts his heart in Hardison’s chest, and he knows he isn’t, but he feels invincible.

He’s never felt this comfortably warm before, and with Parker’s heart in his chest and Hardison’s in hers, he can feel the skimmings of both their feelings running through him.

In bed, they curl around him, and Parker’s wrist rests over where her heart is beating inside. He can feel their fingers interlocked.

Closing his eyes, he doesn’t fight. He doesn’t worry.

He just enjoys the feeling of the three hearts beating in a perfect rhythm as he slips into sleep.


End file.
